A Minor Misdemeanor
by Firecadet
Summary: After punching a guest at a society party, Jenny is arrested and imprisoned. How will she cope with Victorian prison life, and the challenges it brings? And how will Clara manage, when she is borrowed for the week as a substitute, having to deal with victorian london and Madame Vastra? Placeholder for street name removed from chapter 27.
1. An offence is commited

Jenny snuggled into the threadbare, stinking blanket, trying to retain some warmth in the cold cell inside Newgate prison, huddled into a ball on the narrow straw pallet that was serving as her bed for the night, a far cry from the warm, eiderdown quilted bed she normally slept in, at least partially as a hot water bottle for the other occupant, her wife, Madame Vastra. For a few moments, she wondered about taking advantage of the lockpicks that lived in the heel of her boots, concealed behind a plug made with boot-blacking and cork, She quickly decided otherwise, though, simply because she would have little chance of actually making it out of the building.

Eventually, she managed to drift off to sleep, pondering how she'd ended up behind bars in the depths of Newgate prison.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-

When she deposited the tenth tray of empty glasses in the kitchen, Jenny waved over the new maid, Alex.

"Alex, could you take over the drinks for a bit?" She asked the other girl, trying not to notice the certain resemblance between them. She was sure Vastra was going to behave, though, largely because of some rather grisly threats Jenny had made, involving phrases like 'ice' and 'river'. She had also suggested to the other maid that Vastra was a tad unbalanced, mentally. That hadn't taken much convincing, thanks to what she privately saw as one of the more ridiculous views of the Victorian public, that deformation was a divine punishment, and if someone believed that God didn't like someone, that they were mentally unbalanced was easy to believe as well.

"Where are you going to be if I need you?" Alex asked, looking nervous at the prospect of serving so many drinks to the rich, famous, well-connected and socially mobile elite that crowded the redecorated drawing room and dining room, freed from the greenhouse environment that Vastra usually maintained, and replaced with simply painted walls, hung with what Vastra assured anyone who asked were expert reproduction copies of more famous paintings.

In all honesty, Vastra hadn't stolen them herself. She'd acquired them after the resolution of the Calwell museum case, when she tracked down the thief, known in the papers as "the ghost", because of his skill at leaving no evidence behind. A forensically aware criminal was almost unheard of in Victorian England, but he'd left a scent trail, after walking into a pot of geraniums inside the museum while relieving the collection of three old masters, worth, in total, around one hundred and twenty thousand pounds.

That had been all Vastra needed to track him down.

Unfortunately, when she arrived, a pistol had been discharged at her, filling the room with powder smoke, but doing little to inconvenience a siliurian wearing an FBI issue ballistic vest, even without the ceramic insert.

Jenny had been outside, being inconspicuous by reading a newspaper, with a nine millimetre semiautomatic pistol in a pocket sewn into her dress, which also concealed a fifteen inch bowie knife, along with her own ballistic vest. Any attempt to relieve her of her purse, or any other item, would have ended badly.

Vastra had made sure there were separate dishes at the table that night.

"Down the pig and hound." Jenny said. "I need a drink, and some time to think."

"Don't be too long." The other girl pleaded.

"I won't be." Jenny replied, before slipping out of the kitchen door, into the packed stableyard. The variety among horses was surprisingly limited to different stars, with the occasional sock being the only thing to break the almost uniform choice of chestnut horses.

The coachmen were gathered around one of any universe's constants: a metal bin with holes cut into it, with various branches, remains of scrap furniture and quite possibly some of Jenny's firewood keeping the impromptu braizer stoked.

Her heels, short as they were, were still unsuitable for the slightly uneven pavements and roads she had to cross, and she nearly did her ankle in several times, before finally arriving outside the pig and hound.

The pub door was open, allowing both heat and sound to spill out into the cold February evening, with skies clear enough that Jenny had seen stars from the rear terrace of the house. The light of a blazing stove also spilled out into the night, bringing with it a hint of tobacco smoke.

Inside, the taproom was crowded with people, some of them wearing the simple garb of a labourer, with a pint glass in one hand full of small beer, while others wore the less utilitarian garb of the shopkeeper, and had pints of their own. The local policeman, the officer who'd been assigned the paternoster beat for the last year, after fifteen years service in the metropolitan police force, was sitting in a corner, demonstrating the ability of a police officer not to notice anything that might cause them to forget that this is their local.

Jenny wandered up to the bar, making her way with ease through a crowd that knew better than to make the friendly advances pioneered by the half-drunken man, as the last man to pinch her backside, for instance, had needed three weeks before he could resume counting the takings with his right hand, after she broke two fingers and his thumb.

"Evening, Sam." She greeted the bartender, noticing as she did so the small knot of apprentice lawyers and clerks gathered in a corner by themselves, marked out by their distinctive top hats.

"Evening, miss flint." Sam replied, smiling at her. "What'll it be?"

"Have you got any sherry?" She asked.

"As it happens, I do." The bartender replied. "We found a case last night."

"I think I'll have some, then." Jenny responded, knowing full well that the case had likely been acquired in a fashion that PC Miller might just have wanted to discuss with the landlord.

Without further ado, a small glass was produced, from under the bar, and a generous measure of sherry was poured into it. The pale liquid was surprisingly cold, with hints of juniper, along with crisp berries. Refreshed, she decided to order another one, which was delivered as smoothly as the first.

When she'd finished her second glass, she examined the vessel more closely, before gently tapping the base with a fingernail. It rang in the same way the best crystal did.

Shaking her head, she put down her glass, before tossing a shilling onto the counter, and heading back.

The return journey was less hazardous, mostly because she had crossed over to the opposite side early on, avoiding the multiple cobbled side-streets and carriageways she'd nearly done herself a mischief on during her walk to the pub.

The slight warmth of the sherry made her a little too relaxed, and she used her key to enter through the front door.

Inside, the party was just as rowdy as the pub she'd just left, although different garb was on display. Ballgowns and tailcoats were much in evidence, as were knots of simpering teenage girls, clad in embroidered gowns likely to cost more than a navvy's annual wage. These knots were orbited by well dressed boys of a similar age, and here and there, a female would break away from a knot, and ensnare a male in talk of dresses, horses and music. Sometimes, a mature female would swoop down, and separate the pairs with the phrase "and now you must meet..." addressed to one of them, leaving the other to re-enter circulation.

As she pushed, or rather, made her way politely through the crush, Jenny felt a hand on her arm.

She turned, to be faced with a young man who appeared older than most in the room.

"Say, what are you doing in here?" He asked, breathing into her face with breath that smelt of good drink and rich food.

"I'm passing through, sir." She replied, trying not to tense. "I'm Madame Vastra's maid."

"Are you now?" He said. "I'm sure I could find you something different to do, for the next while."

"I don't think so." She replied, firmly. "I need to get back to their kitchens."

"You can't take five minutes to pass the time of day with me?" He asked.

Then he leant forwards. "Cm'here."

She reacted without her brain consulting with the muscle groups involved. Rather than a open-handed, stinging slap, she instead delivered a punch to his face, locking her wrist for maximum effectiveness.

The slap of her first on his face echoed around the suddenly silent room.

"She just punched me!" He yelled.

At the yell, Madame Vastra detached herself from a discussion of lace and hemlines, and glided over.

"Jennifer, did you strike this young gentleman?" She demanded of her erstwhile wife, signalling subtly that this was Ma'am and servant time.

"I did, ma'am." She replied, flushing without putting in any effort at all.

"And why, Jennifer, did you strike the honourable young Mr Brown?"

"I have no excuse, ma'am."

"Indeed. Strax!"

After a moment the sontarian butler arrived at the small cluster of activity around the door.

"You called, ma'am?"

"Strax, go up to the end of the road, and see if Constable Miller is in the pig and hound, will you."

"Yes, ma'am. I will seek out the constable, and bring him back here in..."

"Very good, Strax." Vastra said quickly, over any mention of the sontarian empire. "And as for you, Jennifer, you will go up to your room and wait there for the constable."

"Yes, ma'am." Jenny replied with a curtsy, before going up the stairs, heading for the garret that served has as an official home, in which she kept garments for her work as a servant, rather than the bedchamber she and Vastra shared, which was locked when strangers were on the premises to avoid some of the more awkward questions involving leather catsuits, katanas, and some of the gadgetry contained within.

After a few minutes, she heard the rattle of hobnails on the cobbled street, followed by the habitual pounding on a door that is the traditional leitmotif of a large, florid-faced and genial police officer presented with such a portal, regardless of the fact that the butler was in fact standing next to him outside.

Fortunately for the door, Madame had taken on a second maid for the season, who opened the door with a neat curtsy and a smile. A few moments later, Jenny heard the rattle of hobnailed boots on narrow wooden stairs, and rose, nervously to her feet.

"And wot, miss flint, did ya fink ya were doin' tonight?" He asked, smiling slightly. "Ya 'now ya ain't allowed to punch t' nobs, don't ya?"

"I know, officer." She replied, focusing firmly on his boots.

"Look, we all 'now 'ow 't 'appens. Ya 'ave a drunk youn' man, and 'e lays a 'and on ya. So ya slap 'im. 'E gets t' message, an' backs orf. Problem solved. But no, ya 'ad to go an' punch 'im. An' ya now wha' tha' means."

"It means I'm going before Mr Clarence in the morning." She replied, downcast.

"In one, miss flint. Now, if ya woul'n't mind 'olding out ya ands, I'll do t' 'onours."

Reluctantly, Jenny held her hands out, before looking away in embarrassment as a pair of darbies were fastened around her wrists, forming a pair of rings connected by a chain, but just slightly too small to get a hand through, although she suspected that if she tried too hard, she might be able to. Not that she would. It'd be an excellent way to get a clip around the earhole.

To her surprise, Miller led her down the back stairs, solicitously holding onto one of her arms, ensuring that despite her cuffed wrists, the results from a trip or slip would be negligible.

Her training with Madame Vastra paid off, however, and she was able to keep her balance on the narrow stairs, despite the lack of access to a handrail.

When they reached the coachyard, Strax was waiting, having already harnessed the horse into the coupe, and was in the driver's seat, holding the reins of one of the city's most put-upon horses. High speed pursuits, mercy dashes and even sprints to achieve a last moment rescue were a fact of life when you were the horse pulling Madame Vastra's coupe. It was fed on a diet that would have been considered excessive for a champion racehorse, but it just about kept the weight off with mad dashes back and forth across London.

The journey to Newgate prison was short, the coupe rattling along the stones for about five minutes, thanks to the lack of traffic, before arriving outside the forbidding gates of the prison.


	2. Jenny is Incarcerated

Once Strax had brought the coupe to a standstill inside the prison, Jenny and Constable Miller disembarked onto the uneven cobbles of a prison courtyard, Miller's hand firmly around Jenny's bicep, making any attempt at flight far more challenging, even if she could somehow have escaped from the yard. Above her, watchtowers stood proud from the high, brutal walls, capped with barbed cables set onto the castle-like walls, dampening all thoughts of escape.

It wasn't the first time she'd been inside Newgate prison. She'd accompanied Madame Vastra on visits several times, usually to visit prisoners whose guilt she was unconvinced of, or to watch the executions of those she'd snared, but had handed over to the authorities, rather than carrying out her own, somewhat more unique, brand of justice. It had always scared her when they visited. The cacophony of heavy metal doors slamming shut against equally strong frames, the rattle of hobnailed warder's boots on the metal staircases and walkways had been frightening in its own right, but what made it truly terrifying was the lack of any other sound. There were no yells from prisoners, even those who could see a pair of women walking past their cells, just silence.

When they reached the door, she was surprised that it was a small door, set into a different wing than the central structure that was so terrifying. It was still a large, dark door, with a high lintel that left her feeling her lack of height more than usual, and studded with heavy, blackened nails. But it wasn't the ten foot high main door, usually entered through a wicket gate, with a portcullis above to allow the door to be easily and effectively secured by the warders, in the event of a riot or attempted escape. It was just a large, nail-studded door, with a heavy latch and a peephole set into it.

Inside, there was a large room, with several booths along the walls and a desk at one end, next to a large grill, with a lock that looked designed to defeat lockpicks and anything other than the official key. Beside it, behind the desk, was a large, brutal looking man with roughly cut hair, an oft-broken nose, a permanent scowl and several missing teeth.

He looked up when he saw the door opening.

"''Ello, Miss Jenny. Come to pass the time o' day while your mistress pays someone a visit?"

"Hello, Mr Thomas." She replied, trying to make a polite gesture of respect with her cuffed arms, before Miller took a step forward.

"'Ello Mick." Miller said. "Miss Flint here is in a spot of bother. You see, Madame Vastra was holding a cocktail evening, and it seems on of the young men who'd been brought along to dance with young women took a bit of a liking to her, after having had a couple of drinks too many. I saw Miss Flint in the pig and hound earlier, and she polished off two glasses of sherry faster than you can say tally ho. She must have used the front door, and when our wannabe Casanova made a move, she walloped him right in the chops."

"Aye, I'll bet she did. There was one time when she and her mistress were in here talking to someone, when he suddenly came to his feet and tried to attack Madame Vastra. This one," he gestured warmly to Jenny. "She stepped in front of her mistress before we could even react, and by the time we were in the cell, she had him in an armlock and one knee between his shoulder-blades, and was pushing fit to dislocate his arm before we took over."

"Where did you learn to do that?" Miller asked, curious.

"I went to a small dojo near the docks for a while." She replied. "It was being run by a Japanese woman, some sort of noble, I think, judging from the way her retainers treated her. They didn't mind who they taught, just as long as you were willing to learn and don't mind a few bruises now and again."

"Is it still there?" Thomas asked, seeming intrigued. "My daughter Liz wants to learn a few tricks to keep of the toughs round our way."

"If you take a walk down past the east India docks, it's the small shop with a flag with funny writing on it out front. Ask for Kasumi-San."

"I think I might." He responded. "Would you like a cup of tea, before I do the honours?"

"If you'll trust me with the kettle, I'd much appreciate that." She replied, as Miller loosed her handcuffs. "I know what sort of thing seems to pass for tea around here." She said, rubbing her wrists slightly and smiling at the old joke between her and Thomas.

"I know I'm not up to your standards, anyway." He replied, with a broad smile in return.

"If it's that good, I think I'll have one as well." Miller said

"Madame Vastra is very particular about her tea." Jenny replied, deciding that telling Miller and Thomas exactly where the boxes came from would be unnecessary. They were delivered by the doctor a couple of times a year, labelled; 'Mantellean tea, Mantel system.'and was what he described as the best tea in the universe. It was also brewed, when she would be the only one drinking from the pot, with a few teaspoons of blood. Jenny had steadfastly refused to try the resultant brew, which, according to Vastra, was delicious.

The warder's stash of tea was in the same place as always, inside the end of an old baton hung on the wall next to the small stove. Before she put the filled kettle on the hob, Jenny opened the firebox briefly, before shoving a handful of sticks from the basket next to the stove inside.

After giving things a few minutes, she put the kettle on the hob, before turning to the teapot, sitting on a small shelf just above the truncheon. Gently, she removed the aged bone china, salvaged from a man in a pub, shortly before his arrest for selling stolen property and theft from a horse-drawn conveyance. She winced slightly when she remembered the man had received five years for the theft, and had been lucky to escape the noose. Pushing down her nausea, she used a nearby teaspoon to scoop a teaspoonful for each person into the pot, before adding the now boiling water.

Putting the teapot to one side, she carefully extracted the bottle of milk from under the damp cloth that kept it cool, before pouring a measure of a fingers-breadth into three earthenware mugs, chipped from heavy use, and then letting the tea stand for a couple of minutes.

She spent the time looking out the small stash of rich tea biscuits she knew to live under the sink, before placing one on each of the small plates that accompanied the mugs, before returning to the now brewed pot of tea.

She'd heard the gates briefly open, and the clatter of hooves and iron-rimmed wheels on the cobbles told her that Strax had departed, returning to 13 Paternoster Row with the carriage.

The tea was consumed, and enjoyed by all parties, before Jenny held out her hands for the second time that night, allowing Miller to fasten the handcuffs back around her wrists.

Putting aside his mug, the warder returned to behind his counter.

"What have we got here, constable? He asked, picking up a clipboard with a custody form on it.

"Assault and Battery." Miller replied. "She struck a guest at a party at 13 Paternoster Row."

"Name?" Thomas asked.

"Jenny Flint." Jenny replied, her voice shaking slightly.

"Age?"

"''Bout Twenty five."

"Residence?"

"13 Paternoster Row."

"Occupation?"

"Ladies maid."

"Place of work?"

"13 Paternoster Row."

The information was entered onto the form.

"If you'd follow me, Miss Flint, we can give the officer back his handcuffs."

With a hand firmly on her shoulder, Jenny was taken down a narrow corridor, bounded by metal doors on both sides. The warder's hobnailed boots clattered on the stone floor, sending out tiny chips, several of which penetrated Jenny's stockings and drew blood.

The cell she was finally led into was small, barely large enough for the narrow, shelf-like bed, with a thin straw pallet on top, which was its main feature, along with a bucket in one corner. Behind her, the door slammed shut with a dull clang, before a hatch in the door was opened.

"Put your hands through." Thomas instructed her, before the handcuffs were removed, and the hatch closed, leaving her locked inside the dark cell, with almost no noise around her, except for the receeding clatter of the prison officer's boots.

**Author's notes**

**In the British prison system, a warder is roughly equivalent, in terms of role, to a detention officer in an american prison. The modern term is prison officer, but in Victorian times they were called warders. The reason Jenny was taken to Newgate prison, rather than to a police station, is entirely due to proximity, as what is now the old bailey stands on the site of Newgate Prison, as is literally around the corner from Paternoster Square, built on the site of Patermoster Row, after the latter was destroyed during the blitz.**


	3. Interlude one: Vastra misses her ape

Strax knew better than to hang around, once Jenny had been dropped off at the prison. Hopefully, Vastra would have cleared the party afterwards, otherwise he could well imagine there being blood everywhere when he got back.

He'd given the temporary maid an instruction to the effect that she should not stay in the house with Vastra alone, and that she should be extremely careful when preparing game or other meat for the table, as she reacted extremely badly to blood. He'd said it in a way that suggested she would freak out and panic, or perhaps suffer an episode of mental illness at the sight or smell of blood, rather than attacking her in an attempt to kill and then eat her, which was far more likely.

Frustrated by the situation, he pulled out a small notepad Jenny had given him several months earlier, when she was infiltrating a household as part of a blackmail scheme's dissolution, in order to gain unquestioned access to areas of the house. To aid the deception, she'd brought with her several packets of assorted medical documents about Madame Vastra, along with bills for bull's blood, large amounts of beef and for several _unusual_ leather items from a small shop in Soho many aristocrats had not visited or purchased items in.

In fairness, none of the information had been damaging, and Vastra had spent several days drafting the medical documents, ensuring that everything in them was false, misleading and/or unpublishable in a newspaper.

As for the leather items… well, the shop didn't keep records, did it?

When he reached the house, Vastra was in the kitchen.

Unfortunately for the kitchen, Jenny had never got round to teaching Vastra how to actually operate some of the more technical features, such as the primus stove she'd recently imported from Sweden to increase the speed at which she could prepare tea.

As an almost inevitable result, when Strax pushed open the door, he immediately ducked the still alight primus, which whistled past him at head height, before thankfully hitting a wool tapestry, then landing on one of the brightly coloured wool rugs.

"What sort of useless ape designed that thing?" she hissed, claws out and clearly looking for something to kill. "First it wouldn't light, then, when I stuck it in the fire, it got really hot and started to hiss."

"Milady, please." Strax said, entirely unsure how to calm her down. That had always been Jenny's job. "It was a mistake." He continued, quickly stepping over to the device and stamping on it until it went out.

There were several minutes of incoherent hissing and odd sounds, then Vastra seemed to calm down slighty.

"Strax, get me the number two grappling hook, the metal saw, and my swords. I'll be getting into my hunting clothes."

The idea, initially, didn't seem a bad one to Strax. Leave a member of the unit in the lurch, and in enemy hands? Never! However, there was also the consideration that the likelihood of Vastra being caught, injured or otherwise troubled was high, as he rather strongly suspected that a prison would have considerable security to protect against the more nimble type of thief gaining entry or egress without permission or consent. While Vastra had certain advantages over a skilled cat burglar, such as an enhanced sense of smell, and vision at least partially in the infra-red part of the spectrum, not to mention her chances of fighting off a guard unlucky enough to disturb her being somewhat higher, he rather suspected that the result would be her in prison for attempted jail breaking.

When he arrived at her chambers, she was already dressed to conduct an intrusion, wearing the leather suit she favoured when ease of movement and protection against simple weapons were required, and was buckling her sword-harness around her waist, carefully securing it so as to prevent any movement that might hinder her during combat.

"Your Cocoa, Milady." Strax said, holding out the cup of milk and chocolate powder that Jenny had managed to begin giving her lover lately, to help her sleep.

"Strax, where is my sword?" she demanded, looking just as furious as she had downstairs ten minutes earlier.

"In the armoury, Milady." He replied. "While normally rescuing unit members is optimal procedure, in this case, the risk of capture is too high to proceed. The enemy will release her soon enough, milady. It isn't like she killed him or anything like that."

"Strange…" she mused, accepting the warm mug and blowing on it to quickly cool it. "Normally, I rely on Jenny being around to talk me out of crazy ideas. Now she's gone for a while, and you take over the role."

"As it is only a temporary tasking, I can deal with it, Milady."

"Now, Strax, unless you want to help undress me, it'd be most pleasing if you'd go and polish your weapons again."

"Yes, Milady."

Still nursing her cocoa, Vastra crawled into her bed, before fetching out an extremely thick duvet from where it lived under the bed, before crawling under it, leaving her cocoa on the night table briefly, before turning out the modern gas lamp above her bed.

The cocoa was consumed rapidly, once the lights were out or at least fading, due to the manner of operation of the incandescent gas mantle.

Only an ape, in Vastra's opinion at least, would consider using a radioactive substance in a light fitting, but on a social visit (excepting the cyberman on the loose in the royal armouries.) the doctor had lent her a Geiger counter, allowing her the peace of mind that sleeping within a few feet of one was not going to cause Jenny any health problems, particularly after the inclusion of a ornamental reflector that happened to be made of highly polished lead, and half an inch thick, although he had helped her install a ventilator above the mantle, owing to the sudden surge of radiation when it was switched on.

As she turned over, after finishing her cocoa, she attempted to snuggle closer to Jenny, before realising that the human was currently in a cell somewhere inside Newgate prison. The motion briefly stoked her anger, before the Silurian-safe sleeping pills Strax had slipped into her cocoa put her out for the count.

**Author's note: All technology and food present in this story has been fact checked. And yes, the Victorians really did use lighting sources that produced radiation, including Radon gas, a dangerous alpha emitter, and used them in domestic settings. Also, I apologise for the double posting of chapter one.**


	4. An unpleasant morning

Jenny woke up sore.

When she sat up, her surroundings were strange. Bare, whitewashed walls surrounded her too close for comfort, and the smell from one of the corners suggested that it hosted a rarely cleaned bucket used to store human waste. The only window was small, set high up in the wall opposite the heavy, white painted metal door, with a hatch set into it. There were bars on the window, and the sight of them brought her memories of the previous night crashing back; the blow, her arrest, a friendly enough chat with a friend on the force, before she was booked in, and led to a cold, unwelcoming cell, then locked in for the night.

A clatter in the corridor brought her back from her reverie, and she rummaged under the uncomfortable bed for a bowl and spoon, finding them, and quickly fetching them out. They hadn't been cleaned recently, if ever, but she fought down the sudden bout of nausea by reminding herself of the time she had spent as a match-girl, and admittedly, though only to herself, a prostitute. Clean plates had been an unimaginable luxury for that skinny sixteen year old, as had warm food and any sort of bed.

The hatch flattered open, and a warder she didn't recognise looked in through it.

"Plate." He instructed her, holding up a jug of porridge, half congealed, and with flecks of colour she did not want to look too closely at.

Wordlessly, she held the bowl up the the hatch, receiving a portion of perhaps three ounces of oatmeal.

The smell was not the welcoming aroma she associated with properly made porridge. It smelt of ergot, and she suspected that Vastra would have detected multiple additional aromas that would have been even more concerning. Despite her qualms, she forced herself to eat, knowing that another meal might be a day away. It was a set of programming she'd grown extremely attuned to on the streets of London.

The taste was about as far possible from the smooth, pleasant taste she associated with the porridge she produced for herself and Vastra in the kitchens of 13 Paternoster row, and she smiled at the memory of Vastra complaining about the idea of eating the seeds of a type of grass soaked in lactate, before being won somewhat grudgingly to the idea that it might actually taste good, and be worth eating. The addition of honey, along with a small amount of the powdered bonemeal that served her as a main condiment, had completed the dish for the silurian.

It took her several minutes, despite the extremely small serving, to gag down the food, before she gathered herself upright and began working to make herself at least moderately presentable for her appearance in court, in front of the Major the Right Honourable Geoffrey Clarence, a retired officer who'd served in Afghanistan and India, and brought an inflexible, if somewhat kind, approach to his role as magistrate for the district court.

Once she'd brushed off most of the straw and other assorted debris, such as brick dust, she sat back on the bed, waiting for someone to come and collect her.

Eventually, the rattle of keys in locks and the harsh clatter of hobnailed boots on stone floors and metal walkways died away, to be replaced with a surprisingly cheerful whistle as the guard who'd doled out the rancid, mouldy and quite possibly rat dropping containing porridge stamped is way down the corridor in a rattle and slam of hatches, the jingling of a heavy, well-populated keyring, and the ring of hobnailed boots on the old, worn granite floors. When he got to her cell, to her sudden alarm, he stopped, looking carefully through the hatch.

"Well, now. What do we have here?" He said, the tone dripping with the petty malice of the small-minded tin-god.

"I'm a ladies maid, sir." She replied, keeping her voice low.

"Not feeling "lonely" at all? Don't want some comforting?"

"I don't, sir." She told him, tensing in the same way she would have if confronted in an back-alley by a large man, with no clothes on and a hard on, wielding a butcher's knife.

"Well, you look cute enough." He lowered, reaching a hand into the cell. "You keep nice and quiet, and I won't find you knocked over your slips bucket in the night, and slipped, breaking your neck."

"Come in here and try it." She said, suddenly angry. "I'm Jenny Flint. I'm married to a lizard-woman from the dawn of time, and I survived the Battle of Demon's Run. I've fought against creatures that would tear you apart as soon as look at you, and I'm still here. You think some overweight, overmuscled and oversexed screw is going to be able to make me do anything I don't want you to?"

"You what?" He said, staggering back, trying to forget the momentary feeling that the small girl had just become far larger and far more threatening than he could ever have imagined.

"I'm too much trouble for you." She said. "You want to go and have a cup of tea." She punctuated the phrase with a gesture that would be entirely meaningless to the guard, and to anyone else, for about seventy years. The Doctor had taken her and Vastra to watch Star Wars in the original cinematic release. Vastra had burst out laughing at the lightsaber sequences, and had received a firm slap around the tynpanic membrane for her trouble from Jenny, and had a pop-corn bucket placed on her head by Clara.

Of course, the toy lightsabers that had appeared in the house since had not been brought when Vastra disappeared briefly at the end of the film, and she had not seen her knock several expensive vases over when what could only be described as playing with them. Nor had she asked the doctor if: a. She could have a real one, b. Where she could get one or c. Couldn't he take her to a universe where real ones existed and get her one. She smiled slightly. Her funny old lizard had a habit of turning into a teenager in a cutlers at the oddest moments.

Then there was a rattle of nails on stone, and the unamused bellow of the greater helmeted prison warder came echoing down the corridor.

"Sykes, I told you what would happen if I found you in here again unless you were busy doing something useful!" Thomas bellowed down the corridor.

"Mike, I was only..."

"I know your sort, Sykes. I know you'd be hung for looting a widow's wedding ring if they let you join the army, or slung off the yardarm for raping a barmaid in the navy." The contempt in the voice was sufficient to make Jenny take a step back, and Sykes quailed back from the speaker, one arm rising in instinctive defence.

"Mike..."

"It has never been Mike to you, Sykes. It's Mr Thomas. And if you call me Mike again, I'll put my truncheon so far up your arse that it'll come out a nostril." The last sentence was delivered with a cold, calm intensity that was far more intimidating than a regimental sergeant major's barking roar could ever be. It was a promise.

"I was just passing the time of day with the prisoner, Mr Thomas." He lied, in response to the A's yet unspoken question.

"Pull the fucking other one, it has a bell on it." Thomas replied. "I know you, Sykes. I know you were suggesting something that would make the padre faint, and I know I can't prove it. It'd be your word against hers, and you'd probably be believed, given you've never been caught."

"I was just going, anyway. Good to meet you, Miss Flint." Sykes almost gabbled, before hurrying away, heading for a different part of the massive building.

"Goddammed piece of worthless trash." Thomas muttered. "Sorry about that, miss. He thinks he can use his position and size to take advantage of vulnerable girls like yourself."

"If he'd come in here..." She said.

"You'd be in a whole heap of trouble. The world would be a better place if he had two broken arms, a smashed nose, and whatever other injuries you'd have inflicted, but you'd probably be facing a few years for it, and he ain't worth that." He smiled, or at least showed his teeth in a way that could be called a smile, in a technical manual on facial expressions. "Still, I'm sure he'll fall over in one of the corridors in the Georgian wing soon enough. I know two or three other warders here who'd be happy to help give him a shoeing."

"I can imagine." She replied, suddenly feeling the adrenaline leaving her body.

To her surprise, Thomas had the cell door open in a heartbeat.

"Easy, miss Jenny." he whispered in her ear. "He's gone now." She realised that she was in his arms, sobbing in fear.

They stayed that way for about a minute, before Thomas helped her back to her feet. "Major Clarence will see you in half an hour." He said, gesturing for her to put her wrists together. "It's a pain, but the law is the law."

Without anything more than a slight quaver, she allowed herself to be handcuffed, and didn't resist as a set of manacles were clamped around her ankles, limiting her stride.

Once she was bound, she was led out of her cell, and towards the magistrate's court.

**Author's note: I never expected to take four chapters to reach this part of the story. Originally this would have been the latter part of chapter two. I'm also feeling rather sad at the moment. I'm getting an awful lot of readers, and two people have even followed this story, but no-one has yet done me the kindness of giving me a review. It only takes a few seconds, and it makes my day when someone reviews a story. **

**If anyone can spot the Dirty Harry reference, I'd be interested to know how many people do.**


	5. Travel, and a pleasant meeting

Encumbered by the heavy shackles, Jenny was led back down the corridor she'd taken the previous night, with one hand on her shoulder for support, rather than as a show of authority. The irons fastened around her ankles considerably shortened her stride, and made walking far more challenging as a result. With her hands secured together close in front of her, and connected by a chain to her ankles, any stumble would likely end in a broken nose or damaged eye, as she simply wouldn't be able to catch herself in the same way a person with their hands free would be able to.

"Careful, Miss." Thomas said; his voice almost fatherly. "This corridor through here is right uneven, so it is. _Someone_ might do himself a mischief through here one of these days."

Carefully, he guided her through the section of pitted, weathered stone slabs, with sand crunching underfoot.

"Apparently, this was an exercise yard once, back in the days of King George. When they built the cells, they left the old slabs down. Easier than shiftin' em, I guess. These are proper granite blocks."

After they'd finished navigating the cells, they exited the building through the same door she'd entered by, hours earlier.

The massive gatehouse, made from dark rock, and streaked with lichen and guano, looked even more intimidating by day than it did by night. At night, you couldn't see the half perceived glimpse of eyes, the brief, if dull, flash of light as a rifle tracked you across the courtyard, the man behind it seemingly praying that you'd do something stupid, or simply attack the warder escorting you, and give him an excuse to pull the trigger, sending a high velocity round just under fifteen millimetres across, and made from soft lead, tearing at better than four hundred metres per second into and through the body of any miscreant.

In front of her, a black horse, towering above her, stamped a huge foot, sending sparks into the air off of the hard cobbles of the prison yard, then snorted, sending out a vast plume of steam, which joined with the plumes rising from around its body, a result of the cold February morning.

She was led around the back of the horse, to the rear of a heavy black wagon, with four foot diameter wheels rimmed with thick, pitted tyres of beaten iron, as black as the rest of the intimidating cart.

The gate at the rear of the cart was down, along with a more tiered step than seen on most wagons, allowing a shackled prisoner to enter and exit the cart without having their ankles freed. There was a handhold just within reach of a pair of hands shackled close together and connected to a prisoner's ankles, and she used it to pull herself up into the cart.

The smell when she was inside, even with the rear gate open, was appalling. Vomit mixed with stale beer and spirits, alongside smells generated by a lack of hygiene, and those from illnesses such as gangrene. The sickly sweet stench of the last nearly caused her to lose the measly breakfast she'd gagged down, but by a dint of willpower, she kept it in.

Once she was aboard, the rear door was slammed shut, leaving the only source of light inside the twenty foot long box as the small, barred window barely a foot to a side set into the door, and another, currently closed, next to the driver's seat.

The journey over the rough cobbles of central London was a penance in its own right, with the wagon bouncing from side to side on over-stressed leaf springs, nearly dislodging Jenny several times from her perch on the crude bench that ran along both sides of the compartment. Several of her fellow travellers weren't so lucky, and went sprawling, either into the laps of prisoners next to them, or those opposite. The occasional rattle of a stone bouncing off of the thick oak planking only added to the feeling of sheer terror.

Finally, after what seemed an age, the wagon lurched to a standstill, and the rear door was opened by two uniformed police officers, both showing every sign of a having been heavily involved in persuading villains that resisting arrest was not in their best interests. They were both holding a truncheon, a clear reminder that to disobey their instructions was a very simple way to get whacked around the head with twenty-eight inches of Lignum vitae, with a few ounces of lead set into the head of the shaft for good measure.

Carefully, avoiding any movement that might be perceived as a threat, Jenny clambered down from the wagon, before being passed to a court official, a large man who looked like he moonlighted as a prize-fighter, wearing an ill-fitting uniform that looked out of place worn by a man with scarred knuckles and a nose three inches wide, along with assorted tattoos. He wrapped one of his hands, almost a paw, around her shoulder, being barely able to fit more than three fingers onto it, before jerking her, without even trying to keep her on her feet, in the direction of the stairs leading into the magistrate's court.

Her hands, without her even thinking about it, rose from her waist, where they had been clasped, a comfortable position, even in handcuffs, to trying to reach the seized shoulder, in order to turn the hold into a decidedly less pleasant experience for the holder.

Unfortunately, the chain collecting her wrists to her ankles intervened, preventing the bailiff from receiving a broken shoulder, which she could quite easily have caused even with her hands secured together.

Once she had been dragged inside the building, she was led down a corridor, where a small room, fitted with a heavy, narrow bench, awaited her through a barred door.

She was thrown inside, unable to keep her feet, before the grill was slammed shut behind her, and a bolt went across, keeping her confined to the space barely bigger than her bed at 13 paternoster row.

She was left inside for about half an hour, before the rattle of heeled boots on a hard wooden floor approached the cells. Jenny recognised the pattern easily.

"Ma'am." She said, with surprising exuberance, as Vastra came into view, before being let into the cell.

"Jennifer." She replied, waiting for the guard to go back to his concealed flask of cheap gin. "You know better than to strike young men like that."

"I do, Ma'am." She replied, shame-faced. "I shouldn't have used my knuckles to strike him; I should have used the full width of the first joint instead."

To her great lack of surprise, the Silurian pressed herself against the human, once the guard was out of sight. Her skin felt almost clammy, but still dry and smooth.

"I've missed you, love." She said, gently nibbling her maid's ear-lobe. "I needed you by my side last night."

"With all respect, Ma'am, I'm your wife, not your hot water bottle. I missed you too, of course."

Vastra hissed slightly, as Jenny inveigled a cuffed hand into her wife's hand, and squeezed, gently.

"You daft old lizard, I tol' you to wrap up warm if I weren't there, not to run around on a mornin' like this getting cold."

After a few more moments, the clatter of footsteps, and presumably, the very familiar smell of gin, alerted Vastra to the return of the guard, who'd clearly decided that a shilling was only worth a few minutes of visiting time. She quickly disentangled herself from her maid, before exiting the cell without a backwards glance, and leaving Jenny in possession of a five inch sonic hatpin, quite capable of unlocking her restraints and quite possibly blowing out the door.

Instead, she bent over, and used it to fix her hair into a more presentable form than all-over-the-place-with straw-in-it.

Finally, though, after she'd been alone with her thoughts for a full hour, and, admittedly, amused herself with the Gameboy Madame Vastra had also slipped her, she finally heard the guard being instructed to "Fetch out Miss Flint." She slipped the device into her bodice, where it would be less likely to be found, before being led out of her cell, and towards the court.

**Author's notes:**

**I would like to thank QTArbuthnot and Steel for their kindness in reviewing this story, and take this opportunity to request further reviews from anyone who feels so inclined. They really do make my day. I'm also astonished that I still haven't actually reached the courtroom at the magistrates. That was meant, when I started writing this fic, to be chapter two, latter half of, not chapter six.**


	6. An edifying conversation

As she swept out of the cell-block, Vastra knew that the chances of Jenny actually using her opportunity to escape would be low. The police knew where she lived, and any attempt at flight would likely be short lived.

The cold made her waspish, however. As such, she acknowledged a offer of a cup of tea with a abrupt flick of the hand, before hurrying into a different section of the court.

Rather than wood or stone, this section had carpets, woven from soft red wool, and with a pattern of coiling lines running along the edges, next to the panelled walls decorated with ornate devotional images in gilt frames. They made absolutely no sense to her, although she was able to appreciate the effort and skill that had gone into them. Ape religion was very much a closed book to her, with the pious sermons preaching love, charity and kindness in stark contrast to the everyday activities of the church. She'd never seen a priest coming out of a workhouse with a large empty sack smelling of bread or other wholesome foods, although she'd seen more than a few coming out of houses of ill repute, smelling as if they'd been fully partaking of the services offered within.

When she got to her destination, she was expected. A liveried footman opened the door into the chambers, and she marched through, feeling the pleasing warmth from within, before taking a seat very close to the roaring coal fire.

"Major." She said, throwing back her veil once the door was closed. "We have matters to discuss."

"I assume you are her about your maid." He replied, earning a certain amount of respect by not sitting backwards or otherwise visibly reacting, although his sent indicated a mixture of wonder and confusion, with only a tiny amount of fear flavouring them.

"I am."

"I understand she struck the third son of the earl of Uxbridge."

"She did not realise who he was. He was a drunk, pawing at her and trying to grab her arm."

"So she had no option but to punch him in the face?"

"Major, she has somewhat unusual training. At the moment she threw that punch, that training was reacting to a perceived threat, rather than Jenny attacking a man."

"I can hardly acquit her, Madame. The honourable Mr Brown is still receiving treatment for his injuries, and his father is extremely important at court."

"I wasn't suggesting that you simply release her." Vastra replied, her earlier waspishness creeping back into her tone. "As a warrior cadet, she must learn that actions have consequences, particularly when she mis-uses her training. However, I believe that you were an intimate of Sir Alex Knight."

"What about it?" He asked, a certain amount of trepidation creeping into his scent, overpowering the smell of suspicion that he'd begun to radiate.

"I'm not threatening you, major. I'm simply stating a fact."

"I was." He replied. "So were half the men in my club."

"But most of those men lost money when Sir Alex fled overseas to India."

"Are you accusing me of involvement in his crimes?" He hissed, trying to project anger, although the heady wave of fear radiating from him left him looking rather pathetic in her eyes.

"I wasn't, until a few moments ago. Your fear when I mentioned his name was most artfully disguised behind a facade of anger, but not nearly well enough to fool me."

"What do you want from me?" He asked, seeing a possible way out."

"How long were you going to give Jenny?" She asked. "And I would encourage you to show honesty in answer to every question I ask. I will know if you don't."

"Six months to a year, depending on her behaviour while imprisoned."

"I think you would have given her victim an awful lot less than that."

"A fine, perhaps, for striking one of his peers, or no punishment at all, if he'd struck out against a shopkeeper." He admitted.

"I do not ask you to show that sort of mercy here. Jenny must learn to control her actions. However, I think a short spell of imprisonment is all I can tolerate being apart from my ape for."

"A month?" He asked, trying to hold onto some semblance of control.

"A week. It will teach her a lesson without unduly risking harm to her. She isn't going to overly suffer if you tack hard labour onto that time."

"And in exchange?"

His reply was a smile, showing teeth not dissimilar to those of some of the skulls in the natural history museum. "In exchange, I will keep your secret secure."

"This is blackmail." He said, sitting back slightly.

"Put you hands on top of the desk." She snapped, her sharp ears having heard the slight rattle of a desk draw being stealthily slid open.

"And if I call the men outside to arrest you?"

"Then everyone in the public gallery will hear what I have to say."

The response was a slamming of the desk draw, which she suspected, from some of the chemical smells that had begun to creep into the room, had contained a firearm of some kind.

"You appear to have the advantage, then, Madame." He said, his voice suddenly even and calm. "We must play a game of chess together at some point in the future."

"That would indeed be interesting, major." She replied. "I apologise for my actions, but I need Jenny around the place to help me."

"I understand fully." The magistrate replied, smiling slightly. "My wife has such a maid."

Then have we reached a deal?" Vastra asked.

"I think we have." The magistrate replied, and they shook hands.

**Author's note: in British law, there is a principle known as absolute privilege. It exempts anything said during a trial or session of parliament from being prosecutable for libel or defamation. As such, a judge would not be allowed to prevent Vastra from speaking, regardless of her motivations, any statement that she was making in a mitigation speech. In Victorian society, such a claim would end someone's respectability and exclude them from society, even before Scotland yard got involved.**

**I would also like to thank imnotreallyahipster and BiblophilicLove for their reviews, and request that anyone who likes the story does the same.**


	7. In court

As she was ushered into the dock, Jenny caught a brief glimpse of Vastra, sitting in the part of the public gallery nearest the dock. The door behind her was shut and bolted, leaving her suddenly feeling very alone and nervous. The railing that surrounded the chest high, on her at least, wooden frame of the dock made escape almost impossible, at least without a lock pick, several confederates in the courtroom, and several minutes between their exit and the alarm being raised.

It took perhaps two minutes for the magistrate to arrive, giving her ample time to glance around the room.

Those looking at the dock saw a small woman, wearing the uniform of a privately employed housemaid, with her hair full, despite what were clearly her best efforts, of straw, although it was pinned up in a neat bob to the rear of her head. Her face did not immediately strike any of the variety of onlookers as more than attractive, but there was something about her pose that spoke volumes about her, as did the way she simply stood, shackled hands clasped in front of her, with her head bowed, and her lips moving slightly, obviously to the onlookers, in prayer.

Vastra's hearing, on the other hand, was considerably better than the human norm, or even the extremes of human possibility.

"Ma'am, I don't know what you're doing here," she was saying, almost to quietly even for Vastra to hear. "But I'm sure that the magistrate would have enjoyed his whiskey a whole lot more if he hadn't had that visit from you. Don't look at me like that, I know you, you daft old thing, and I know full well why they never caught the honourable Sir Alex Knight, because I do the books, and the laundry."

She grinned slightly, before continuing.

"I don't want you to try and break me out, seeing as, if I know you, I'm going to be facing something a lot less serious than what I might have been otherwise. I don't think you'd have got me off with a fine, but I doubt I'm going to suffer _too_ much."

Finally, there was a clatter from the official door.

"All rise." The usher announced, before Major the Right Honourable Geoffrey Clarence swept into the court, fully robed and bewigged, before sitting down in his official chair, and a good five feet above Jenny.

Once everyone was seated again, the usher began proceedings.

"Are you Miss Jennifer Flint, employed and living at 13 Paternoster Row?"

"Yes. She replied, the chains around her wrists and ankles suddenly seeming considerably heavier.

"The charges against the defendant are as follows: That on or about the 16th of February this year, the defendant, Miss Jennifer Flint, did bodily strike The Honourable Mr Gregory Brown, while Mr Brown was attending an event at 13 Paternoster Row, where the defendant is employed as a ladies maid. This blow resulted in bruising to the face of the victim and the drawing of blood from his nose."

"How does the defendant plead: Guilty, or Not Guilty?"

"Guilty."

"Are there any factors that the defendant would like to bring to the attention of the court in mitigation?"

"Only that I have been working hard in the service of Madame Vastra for several years now, and she has had nothing but praise for my industry and determination."

"Very well. The court accepts the guilty plea."

"Miss Flint." The magistrate said, glaring down at her from his position above of the dock. "Your actions in this case are completely unacceptable in modern society. However, I am assured that you are essential to the running of Thirteen Paternoster Row, and that you are indeed industrious and hard working. Furthermore, you have no previous convictions. As such, you are hereby sentenced to one week's hard labour. Consider it a token of the future punishment that may be doled out if you breach the laws of this land again." He gestured to the clerk.

"All rise."

There was a clatter and rustle as about three dozen people rose to their feet, before the magistrate marched out of the room.

**This chapter is somewhat shorter than the norm. I had a whole massive trial planned out, but unfortunately, Jenny decided to plead guilty instead. This rather shortened the chapter. I would like to thank Son of Whitebeard for his review to the previous chapter, and encourage anyone who likes the story to give me some nice reviews as an encouragement to continue. This story is in no way close to over.**


	8. Back behind bars

To her surprise, Jenny felt nothing but relief at the verdict that had been handed down to her. Yes, she was going back to prison, but she was going to be free almost before she knew it, rather than languishing behind bars for months on end.

The lock behind her clicked, and a heavy hand clamped down on her shoulder as she was led straight down to the cells, without passing through any of the public areas of the prison, before being inserted into the same tiny cell she'd occupied before the ten minute hearing.

Swearing slightly under her breath, she curled up on the bench, giving her enough room to reach her gameboy, before continuing where she'd left off, deliberately challenging another trainer, in order to pit her team against theirs.

She had sufficient battery life and additional batteries to last a total of ninety hours, assuming, of course, that Vastra had remembered that she needed to change the batteries anyway.

Three duels, a dozen wild pokemon and a cleared dungeon later, she heard the jangle of keys that preceded the arrival of a court bailiff.

Quickly, she tucked the gameboy into a small case she and Vastra had had made for it, carefully disguising it as a small bible, before closing the top of the case, completing the illusion. It would even open, at least as far as her favourite books were concerned. She opened it to a section that, according to the Doctor, was talking about a alien invasion he'd foiled.

When the bailiff arrived, all he could see was a young woman, bent over a bible and leafing through it.

The door was opened, abruptly, before she was ordered to stand, and dragged out of the cell once she was upright. If anything, as a convicted criminal, rather than a simple suspect, she was treated even more unpleasantly by the man dragging her along out of the court. A stumble, previously responded to by a half-break in the man's stride, was simply ignored, causing her shackles to cut briefly into her wrists, drawing blood.

The wagon waiting in the rear, enclosed yard of the magistrates court was a different design, with multiple barred windows, each letting into a different small compartment. Several of the doors were still open, and she was basically hurled through one of them, barely being given enough time to remove her feet from the doorway before it was slammed shut, then the bolt was driven home, and padlocked shut.

Inside the cramped space, there was a simple bench, set into the wall directly opposite the door, with a small handle set into it.

She was simply left alone for around ten minutes, with the only sound she could hear being the periodic banging of the heavy oak doors, before a sudden surge as the wagon leapt into motion without warning, sending her slamming into one of the three inch thick oak walls, before she managed to grab onto the metal handle bolted to the seat, and use everything she'd learnt from Vastra to pin herself into the seat.

The ride seemed faster than her previous journey, and it was only a few minutes before she was back outside the intimidating gatehouse of Newgate prison. From within the tiny compartment, she heard the groan of the gates as they opened on poorly oiled hinges. The wagon picked up speed again, and the compartment momentarily darkened as the gates blocked all light to her cell, before they were through.

On the inside, the guard force was much in evidence, with several of the warders cradling shotguns, broken open, with the glint of fresh brass cartridges visible.

In turn, each compartment was opened, and a manacled prisoner was led through the doors, into the building. Each successive transfer made Jenny quake slightly, and a pocket of dread began to build up in her stomach, growing deeper each time a prisoner was taken through the small wicket gate into the building.

Finally, she heard the rattle of the padlock on her compartment, and the door was pulled open by a warder she recognised.

"Mr Davies." She greeted him, trying to stay calm. The warder looked like someone you'd expect to see on the far side of the bars, with a nose at least an inch wider than his face suggested it should be, and missing several of his front teeth, which were exposed by his broad smile.

"This is unexpected, Jenny." He replied, as he supported her down from the compartment. "I'd have thought working in a large house precluded free enterprise."

"I'm not in for that, sir." She replied, unable to keep her face from reddening, as her feet finally touched the rough cobbles. "I punched the third son of the Earl of Uxbridge at a party at Paternoster Row last night." She explained; her face colouring with embarrassment. "I hit him too well, but not well enough, if you understand."

"I think I know what you mean." The warder, a veteran of dozens of brawls in the east end, replied.

As he led her towards the gateway she privately thought of as the Gates of Mordor, her stride shortened, just slightly, before she fought down her fear and pushed on, remembering an litany on the subject Vastra had borrowed from a mid-twentieth century science fiction novel.

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain." she recited, quietly, allowing herself to picture the look on Vastra's face whenever Jenny failed at a task, such as picking a lock, or cracking a safe.

Vastra had tried to learn how to do both, but had broken fifteen sets of lock-picks in various ways, and permanently buggered the locking mechanisms of three safes, requiring a Sontaran laser cutter to open them in order to recover the jewellery Jenny had locked in them.

Strangely, the litany did calm her, and she stepped through the gates with her head high.

Instead of the visitors' room, she was taken down a different corridor, and led into a small room, with a grill for a door.

"I'm going to have to ask you to disrobe." Davies told her.

Her face coloured, turning a bright crimson at the sort of taking all of her clothes off in front of a man, despite her sojourn to a holiday resort in Italy in the seventies.

"Jenny, in case it escapes you, and not to put it bluntly, I'm not going to see anything I haven't seen before."

Silently, she held out her arms, and just shook them, causing the heavy chains to clink. Without saying a word, the warder unlocked them, before kneeling down and disconnecting the chain from her ankles, leaving her able to fully remove all of her clothing.

Once she was naked, she covered herself, one hand over her groin, the other covering both nipples.

"Is there anything in your clothing I'm going to find?" he asked, after she'd handed over the hatpin.

"Only my pocket bible." She replied, having been relieved of the rest of her possessions when she was booked in the previous night.

"Right." He said. "Go through that door."

She nodded, admittedly reluctantly, before proceeding into a small room about the size of a coffin.

Once she was inside, the door slammed shut behind her, dropping down from above, shortly followed by a deluge of lukewarm, soapy water. The deluge continued for several minutes, before finally ceasing, leaving Jenny's eyes stinging from the harsh carbolic soap.

When the door opened again, she was greeted with a large, ragged towel, along with a set of clothes very different to her own. The luxury fabrics Vastra had dressed her ape in for some time were replaced with a crude, ragged dress, a tiny bit shorter than society would approve of, and showing far too much shin to be permissible outside of a prison. There were a number of rags, which she used to tie her breasts roughly into position, and to provide some modesty in other areas.

Once she was dressed, Davies knelt down, and reconnected her manacles, linking her ankles together, but not restraining her hands.

Once she was restrained, she was led down a corridor, before being confronted with a paddlewheel construction, with a number of cubicles spaced along it, most of which were occupied by a prisoner. She was led, by the shoulder, to one of the few compartments that were vacant.

"Prisoner Flint, when I say begin, you will climb onto the wheel, and you will begin walking on it until I tell you to stop. Any talking will be punished. Begin."

Wordlessly, she clambered onto the device, grabbing onto the handle running roughly at chest height along the length of the machine, and began to walk, each step causing her manacles to cause discomfort.

After eight hours, she was allowed to leave the machine, her entire body aching, and her mouth dry, before being led into a cell.

If anything, the small room that was to be her home for the next week was more spartan than the room she'd spent the previous night in, with no mattress, just a hard wooden bunk, an open hole leading into a sewer, leaving the cell permanently stinking of sewage, and absolutely nothing else.

It was at that point, exhausted, and unable to help herself, that she finally gave in, and just began crying, curled up on her bunk.

**Authors note: while I was writing this chapter, I revamped and flashed out chapter one, which I had produced in a certain amount of haste, and without some of the detail I would normally have included.**

**I would also like to thank Mileminnie for their kind review, and the follow-up PM, and would hope that anyone reading this story would be kind enough to give me a review. I will always get back to you within twenty-four hours.**


	9. Interlude two: Vastra calls the Helpline

The insistent ringing of the phone dial was everything Strax needed to know: Madame Vastra was trying to make a phone call.

Normally, this was one of the many duties fulfilled by Jenny, on the basis that she understood how to operate a phone, dial a number, ask the operator to put her through to it, and then hand over the phone to Vastra, once all of the tricky bits were out of the way.

"[Person of low birth and immoral demeanour] thing." Vastra hissed, before yelling; "Strax, do you know how to operate the phone?"

The sontaran butler appeared at that point.

"Let's see…" I think you pick up the handset, and talk into it."

"Give me that." Vastra hissed. "Hello, operator, could you get me…" she looked down at a card on which the number she was trying to call was written. "Buckingham Palace 8638."

"One moment, Madam." The operator replied. "Connecting you now."

**Mars, 3576, the large comet observatory.**

The insistent ringing of the TARDIS phone brought the Doctor out of a state of wonder, while he was looking at the various objects that had been filmed in the last month. Even for a Time Lord, beauty could still be found in the universe in surprising places.

After hoping whoever was trying to ring him would give up, (it sometimes worked) he finally gave in, and answered the phone, taking it inside the TARDIS and placing it on the console, just before he stole one of Clara's chips.

"This is the Doctor." he said.

"Doctor, it's Vastra." He heard, in the breathy Scottish accent of the Silurian detective. "We've had a setback."

"What kind of setback?" he asked, leaning over the console and pulling several levers, before swiping another chip.

"Jenny has been arrested."

"What did she do?" the Doctor asked, curiously.

"She punched someone." Vastra replied. "I forget she is still a warrior cadet at heart, despite her skills."

"I see. And this person made a complaint?"

"I had to." Vastra replied, layering her voice with guilt. "If I hadn't called the police, people would wonder."

"I see. What sort of help will you be needing?"

"I need someone who can operate ape kitchen appliances, for a start. I also need a person who won't object to the occasional chase through London, or helping to tackle a criminal."

Clara spun around at that point, glaring at the Doctor.

"No. I am not going." She hissed.

"I'm sure Clara would be very happy to help you out." He replied, grinning, before making another chip vanish.

"Doctor!" Clara hissed. "I need to be in the classroom in a few hours."

Another chip vanished with the reply. "You're not going to miss your lesson."

"And you can be sure of that, can you?" she demanded. "I remember sending you for coffee, and you delivering it three weeks later after I'd had to make my way back from Glasgow."

"Relax, I just took a detour." He explained, before she slapped his hand away from her chips.

"Have you ever had to explain to a police officer why you don't have anything to prove how you travelled to Glasgow, after being randomly detained at the train station because someone saw the size of your rucksack and thought it was full of drugs?"

"Never mind that, Clara. I promise that I will get you back to the school, in time to deliver your lesson."

"Right…" She said, somewhat unconvinced. "I'll be holding you to that."

"I know you will." He replied, before pulling the lever that would send the TARDIS where he wanted it to go, having plugged in the co-ordinates for Vastra's stableyard.

When the doctor opened the doors, he looked out onto a scene of war. Roman legionaries, in a massive line, were drawn up opposite a horde of celts, each group gathered around their tribal banners. There was a lot of pointing, along with a group of cavalry scouts riding up to take a look, before the romans seemed to come to a rather unpleasant conclusion.

"I wish people wouldn't do that." The Doctor muttered, noticing the subtle redirection of several nearby pieces of light field artillery. "Clara, inside, now." He snapped, noticing her having darted outside with her camera-phone, before taking some footage of the scene.

At the sight of her, however, several groups of celts had begun to advance.

When the rest of the army noticed the forward creep of a few elements, they charged towards the romans, screaming incoherent war-cries that promised all sorts of nasty fates.

About the time they reached the TARDIS, and Clara was back aboard, the Doctor pulled the lever again, and the TARDIS vanished.

When they opened the doors again, Clara thought at first that they were in a forest during an earthquake. Massive limbs moved past the TARDIS, accompanied by subsonic booming noises that shook the time machine like a washing machine.

"Wow!" Clara breathed, before darting outside to take a photo. "David Attenborough, eat your heart out."

"Titanosaurs." The doctor said, stepping out of the TARDIS himself. "Some of the largest organisms in history… Don't do that!" he said, as Clara held out a handful of fronds to a curious juvenile. A subsonic rumble quickly hurried the small dinosaur on its way, tucking in under its mother without a backwards glance. "If you want a dinosaur for a pet, I'll get you a Magyarosaurus. They're just about small enough to fit in your house."

Clara glanced back at him, before reluctantly stepping inside the TARDIS again.

"Victorian London, or cretaceous Hungary?" the Doctor asked, back at the console.

"I'd have a hard time explaining a six metre sauropod, so let's go for London." She replied.

"You sure?"

"London." She repeated, before the Doctor pulled the lever to transport them.

While the TARDIS was making the journey from the thirty-sixth century to the nineteenth, Clara busied herself changing.

The massive wardrobe room belonging to the TARDIS was always an interesting place to visit, especially when you needed to dress for an occasion in which modern clothing would most definitely be out of place, and would lead to complications involving stakes and accusations of witchcraft.

She crossed to the console that controlled the massive clothing racks, before entering her requirements; 'Victorian servants uniform, 1890's, and appropriate undergarments.' The clothing rack whirred and clanked for a few moments, before a set of clothes arrived on the conveyor belt that transported the machine's output.

The garments that the machine had chosen were an long sleeved white collared shirt, with a row of simple buttons along the front, a sea green woollen tunic, designed to go over the shirt, along with a plain black dress, made from a surprisingly smooth fabric. There was also a supply of undergarments, made from large amounts of fabric, but comfortable enough to wear. There was also a pair of simple ankle boots, with wooden soles.

Unbidden, the machine had also provided her with a carpetbag, containing several changes of clothes, along with a small bag, which contained, when examined, fifteen shillings, five thrupenny bits, and a small mound of pennies and ha'pennies.

The garments took several minutes to don, largely because of the sheer number of buttons, and the Victorian undergarments took even longer to initially attach, although they fitted perfectly, thanks to the TARDIS. The shirt fitted similarly well, providing ease of movement, comfort and the appropriate uniform in one single garment, with the tunic covering the buttons and providing warmth. The dress was made of heavy wool, and was surprisingly warm, although the fact that it came down below her ankles was disconcerting when she first practiced walking in it.

Once she was dressed, and has gathered up the carpetbag, she headed back through to the control room. Hearing the wooden footwear on the metal floor was more than slightly disconcerting, but ultimately she knew that it wasn't going to cause her any problems.

Inside the control room, the Doctor was busy at the console.

"Ahem." She said, before spinning around as he turned to face her.

"It looks good on you." He said. "Very servanty."

"Thanks." She replied. "I'm glad that you approve." Her tone wasn't going to etch metal, but it was more acidic than normal conversation.

"Keep away from brothels, don't drink too much, and stay on the right side of Vastra." He growled, unamused. "Watch out for serial killers, don't drink anything a client offers you, and never share anything Vastra has cooked for herself."

"Yes, dad." She chorused, smiling.

The time Lord spun to face the console, muttering something too quiet for her to hear.

A moment or so later, the TARDIS touched down cleanly, before she opened the door.

"Behave yourself." The Doctor told her, before she scampered out of the TARDIS.


	10. Artful Dodger Case: Prelude

When Clara opened the TARDIS doors, she was greeted by the conflicting smells of the late nineteenth century in a metropolis. It wasn't nearly as bad as it had been, according to the Doctor, in previous times, but, to her twenty-first century nose, it was still like being hit in the nostrils by a baseball bat, with horse-excrement competing with unfiltered smoke, factory pollution and a certain underlying miasma of raw sewage. Underfoot, she could feel the tell-tale straw and organic substances of the stable yard, and the hard, smooth cobbles below them, very distinct through the soles of the shoes she was wearing, which were effectively thin soled pumps with high ankles.

She'd looked a number of items out of the extremely extensive wardrobe provided by the TARDIS, and was wearing a simple white shirt, with a high collar, along with an ankle length black dress. Over the shirt, she was wearing a sleeveless woollen shirt, in sea green. She also had a stock of similar garments in a carpet bag slung over one shoulder.

About fifteen feet from where the TARDIS had appeared, there was an official looking coach parked in the stable-yard. The horse, an impressive looking animal, was wearing a nosebag, which only slightly reduced the effect, and far less than the uniformed coachman who was busy wiping off what looked like a quart of gin from the front of his uniform.

"Sorry." Clara called, before heading inside, wiping her feet conscientiously on the rear doormat before stepping off of it onto the carpet.

Inside, she was met by Strax.

"Can I take your coat?" The sontaran asked, offering a solicitous arm.

"I'm not wearing one." She replied, feeling a moment of Deja-vu.

"Are you wearing any garments that I may take?" he asked, shortly before having a cardigan draped over his head.

"There you go." She replied, smiling.

"Miss Clara, I really must protest." He responded, clearing the cardigan from the top of his head. "I'm Madame Vastra's butler, not a coat stand." The sontaran responded, indignantly, before she also handed him her bag.

"Could have fooled me." She retorted, before patting him on the head. "Where's Vastra?"

"Madame Vastra is in the drawing room. Would you like me to conduct you there?" The sontaran responded, specifically using her title.

"I think I can find it, thanks. Would it be OK if you took my bag up to my room?." Clara responded, with a mischievous smile. "Jenny has shown you how to make tea, right?"

"I have been following her instructions on the matter, Miss Clara. And Yes, I will transport your bag to your assigned quarters."

"Excellent. If you could bring some tea through in a few minutes…"

"I will do as you ask." Strax declared, before marching off in the direction of the kitchens.

Making a circling gesture with her index finger, Clara went in search of Vastra.

~0~0~

"As you are no doubt aware, 'Madame'," The leading politician said, dropping the quotes neatly into place around her adopted title. "The loss of these plans is a great threat to the security of the kingdom."

The man had spent the previous half hour lecturing her about the theft of plans for an experimental underwater boat, which, for some entirely unknown reason, at least outside of the home office, had been codenamed "Artful Dodger." Apparently, if they were sold overseas, it would be a dire threat to national security, along with the effectiveness of the royal navy.

Vastra wasn't convinced.

"Admiral, if what you say is true, this vessel would have to be able to travel at sixteen knots while submerged, and release a mine undetected by its prey, before retiring a considerable distance to avoid being destroyed by its own mine. The torpedoes you intend to arm it with, which you call a revolutionary weapon, require the submarine to nearly surface, within a few hundred yards of its intended prey, which then has to remain within that radius and on the same course for nearly a full minute, during which time it must fail to spot the highly visible trail of bubbles from the engine approaching it. Overall, sir, I fail to see how it is a weapon against anything other than a merchant vessel, such as a slow steamer, and even then, an alert lookout would be all that was needed to prevent damage."

The silurian was seriously considering murder, simply because of the annoying single minded insistence that this was the most serious problem in the universe, when there was a knock on the drawing room door that connected to the kitchen, followed by it swinging open.

"I hope I'm not interrupting." Vastra heard the newcomer say. "I was sent here by Mr Strax to see if anyone wanted any refreshments?"

Turning around, she was surprised to see Clara in a appropriate uniform, with a simple white shirt overlaid by a sea-green vest, and with a simple, clean black skirt underneath it, with just a hint of sensible, plain black pumps underneath, with no heel to speak of. Admittedly, there was _something_ else, but she knew that raising it in front of company would lead to complaints.

"The agency sent me to take over for Miss Flint while she is indisposed," Clara explained, taking care to avoid using any provocative phrases like imprisoned. "I've been reading through her notes on the household, and I hope I can do as good as job as she does."

"Ah, excellent." The Whitehall worthy exclaimed. "I could use a stiff brandy. I'm sure that the drinks cabinet can be relied on for such."

"I'll see what I can find, sir." She replied, before curtsying and heading out of the room, hoping she'd derailed any plans to commit bureaucraticide.

The kitchen, fortunately, was organised, replete with copper pots and pans, all highly polished, and so she was easily able to find the kettle, hanging on a rack next to the stove, along with several other similar vessels.

Once she'd found the kettle, and filled it with water, before placing on the hotplate of the aga, she turned to tracking down the tea, which, as it turned out, lived in a small labelled drawer in a wall cabinet next to the counter, along with dozens of assorted herbs and spices, along with the condiments, and set it to brew on the aga, before ducking into a room immediately next to the kitchen, which seemed little used.

Inside, sure enough, there was a stock of spirits and other intoxicating beverages, particularly wine. Looking over the extensive wine rack, she counted eighteen different vintages, and more than twenty vineyards. The stock of spirits leant heavily towards 'medicinal' drinks; whiskey and brandy, although there were also bottles of port, and what might have been sherry. All of the bottles were coated in a fine layer of dust.

She selected a whiskey from the shelf by the simple measure of selecting an already opened bottle, and extracting it. After a few minutes of rummaging in the kitchen cupboards, she located an appropriate glass to serve it with. By that time, the water had boiled on the stove, and she put the leaves in the pot, before adding the boiling water, in order to begin the brewing process.

Thanks to the layout of the kitchen, she was instantly able to locate a copper tea tray, that, she guessed, was probably worth more in the 21st century than a diamond ring. Regardless, she placed a tea-towel onto the elegantly engraved tray, before loading it up with the glass of whiskey, two cups and saucers, a half-opened packet of rich tea biscuits, the teapot, and, simply to ensure eventual departure, the bottle of whiskey.

It wasn't an easy carry, even for a teacher experienced in transporting multiple folders down a corridor full of students, but she managed to return to the drawing room, and place the tray on a small serving table, before pouring a cup of tea for Vastra, and passing the Admiral his drink. She then stood behind the table, seeming to almost disappear, as far as the Admiral was concerned.

"So, 'Madame,"' he asked, putting the Madame into a french accent. "Are you intended in taking the case?"

"My fee will be paid?"

"We have some discretionary funding that we can use to pay you." He replied. "Your rate is £3 10s an hour, am I correct?"

"Given that you wish me to put aside a number of other cases, including several that are near to fruition, in order to focus on yours, you will be paying my premium rate." She replied, calmly. "There will also be a surcharge for the essentially uninteresting nature of this case."

"How much do you want?" He muttered, reaching to the side-board for a second cup of whiskey.

"£5 per hour. You will receive a full invoice with your plans."

"I could hire a dozen other detectives for that sort of money." He burst out, taking a hasty gulp of his whiskey."

"You could. However, I think it unlikely that you would see your plans again if you hired any of those bunglers." She declared, dismissively. "They're perfectly good for finding out who else your wife is sleeping with, which is a question I think you should be asking, judging by your boots, or for following foreign diplomats around, but I am far more subtle when it comes to locating documents such as these." before finishing with; "Clara, more tea." holding out her empty bone china cup imperiously.

Clara poured the tea, resisting with difficulty the urge to slap the silurian's hand for the somewhat imperious nature of her statement, before realizing how invisible it made her to a Victorian aristocrat.

"I still say it is an extortionate rate, 'Madame'." He argued, visibly red in the face.

"It is the rate you will be paying, unless you know another detective who might be able to locate your documents, and I doubt that charlatan in baker street will be able to help you either."

"Mr Watson was highly recommended to me by several members of my club." He stated, hotly.

"He is a fraud, who works using music hall magic tricks and overweening pride. Mr Brown should not have sacked the butler after his wife's jewellery box disappeared. It was her maid." She declared.

"How did you..." He began.

"I read the papers." She replied, calmly. "I know who is selling what to which pawnbrokers, and I often know where it came from."

"How soon will you have me my papers back?" He asked.

"I would expect to return them within the week." She replied, before turning to Clara. "Jen... Clara, go to the back of the mews in Oxford circus, and ask for Muggins. Tell him I want to know about anyone visiting several embassies, particularly if he is carrying a satchel, and spends an extended period inside each."

"Yes, ma'am." Clara replied, with a curtsy. "Do you want me to summon Mr Strax to see the gentleman out?" She asked.

"I think that would be a wise course." Vastra replied. "I wouldn't want my reputation to suffer."

Quickly, Clara moved over to the bellpull in one corner of the room.

Within a few seconds, Strax appeared.

"Strax, would you be so kind as to conduct the gentleman to his carriage?" Vastra asked.

"If you'd like to follow me, sir?" The sontaran said, before the Admiral stood up, bowed to Vastra, before departing.

"Ma'am…?" Clara asked, once the man was on his way.

"Go along Newgate street, and simply follow it towards Hyde Park." Vastra said. "Stay on the pavement where you can, and keep an eye out for carriages."

"Follow newgate street towards hyde park, and ask for Muggins at the Mews when I get there." She repeated.

"Excellent." I'll hope to see you back here at five." Vastra said, before shooing her temporary servant out of the door, taking a moment simply to look over her figure, comparing it in her mind to Jenny's. Her gaze lingered on Clara's rear end, and she momentarily imagined what it would feel like under her hands.

Then the door swung shut behind Clara, and she turned to the more important business of deduction.

**It has been a while, by my usual standards for an active fic, since this story was updated. I've had a busy week, and this was the first time I had all of my gadgets together in order to combine various musings and small sections. I would also like to thank allmydesiredpennamesaretaken for their review of the last chapter, and encourage anyone who enjoys reading this story to do the same.**


	11. Artful Dodger Case: Setting things going

Walking through the streets of Victorian London wasn't a new experience for Clara. In some ways, it wasn't to dissimilar to walking through the London of the 21st century, although the streets were quite different in other ways, such as the prevalence of painted advertisements, the clatter of iron rims and shod hooves on the cobbled streets, and the sight of horse drawn hansom cab had seemed slightly thrilling at first, before she realised that road deaths had not increased, but had decreased, with the introduction of the horseless carriage, as extremely early cars had been known.

She was also surprised by the prevalence of the attitude that in the 20th century had been known as the white van man among those driving medium sized delivery vehicles, shortly after she dodged by inches a brewer's dray that seemed to think the kerb was level with the wall of the building nearest the road.

"Watch where you're going, you blind idiot!" She yelled after the dray, resisting the urge to pepper the sentence with four lettered Anglo-Saxon terms which might have somewhat disconcerted the London citizenry.

After that incident, she took extreme care when approaching any junction.

As she continued through London, Clara became aware of another group that was almost absent from the streets of modern London: the street merchant.

Although she was familiar with the big issue seller, and similar persons of their ilk, essentially inoffensive and polite, not to mention passively selling their products, the street traders she was walking past were considerably more aggressive, seeming to ignore the fact she was dressed as a servant, and offering goods ranging from the useless (snuffboxes that contained opium), to goods she had no reason to purchase on the streets, such as cooking equipment or foodstuffs. Admittedly, she did purchase a box of matches from a match-seller's tray, but that was because she actually needed them.

When she reached Oxford circus, it was a place both achingly familiar and shockingly different. Instead of the tourmasters she still visualized London buses as, there were horse drawn omnibuses, painted in the same red and gold livery she was familiar with, and open topped. Around the edges of the square, she could see a few pairs of policemen, wearing the familiar domed helmet, and resplendent in their comparatively eye-catching blue uniforms with rows of silver buttons, and with eighteen inch truncheons hanging on leather straps from their belts, along with a pair of darby handcuffs.

In this version of London, she knew that as she was dressed as a servant, she was relatively secure from the attentions of the gangs of child pickpockets who would inevitably would be swarming in such a heavily trafficked area, although she kept both hands firmly in her pockets as she crossed towards a pair of police officers.

"Afternoon." She greeted them, knowing that being rude to a police officer in this era was a excellent way to be arrested for obstructing a constable about his duties.

"Afternoon, miss." One of them replied, while the other stepped to on side, allowing him to continue scanning the crowd behind her.

"Could you point me in the direction of the mews, officer?" She asked.

"Just through that gate." The spokesman replied. "Anyone you're looking for?"

"Not really." She replied. "My mistress sent me to enquire about hiring a second carriage for an event in three days time."

"Where do you work?" He asked, seemingly curiously.

"I'm a relief maid currently employed at 13 Paternoster row."

"There was some bad business there two nights back." The officer replied. "Madame Vastra's personal maid punched someone, I heard. It was in the Times."

"I wouldn't know, sir." She said. "All I know is that I was sent to the house as a replacement maid."

"I'm sure you'll be kept busy." The officer grinned. "Madame Vastra seems to get an awful lot of callers at all times of day and night."

"That's useful to know." She said. "I'll make sure to keep my keys handy." She made a show of producing a svelte pocket watch. "Madame said she needed me back in an hour." She explained, before heading into the stables.

To one side, she could see a number of curious heads protruding from their stables, along with a group of men who seemed extremely busy, although seemingly doing very little.

"There's a shilling for anyone who knows where I can find a lad called Muggins." She said, producing the small silver coin.

One of the grooms lent away from what looked like a game of cards.

"Around the corner, with a few of his mates." He replied, before deftly catching the coin when Clara tossed it to him. "Ta, Luv."

When she turned the corner, Clara was stuck by the similarity between the group she'd left behind and the group in front of her. The group of boys, generally younger than twelve, were gathered around an impromptu card table, playing for what looked like bent nails out of horseshoes, using a hand drawn deck.

"Muggins?" She asked, before, predictably, the most disreputable looking member of the group stood up. He was wearing what looked like a top hat, along with a wooden cap underneath, and a overcoat with the sleeves cut off at the original elbow.

"Ya?" He said.

"Madame Vastra says that she would be interested in anyone strange who has been going in and out of several buildings on embassy row, most likely with a satchel. She would appreciate a description and a simple sketch if possible. She also says that the rate is a shilling a day, with a guinea for the lad who finds the man we're after."

"Do'ya kno' 'ho ya're lookin' fore?" The lad asked, in a semi-indecipherable accent, even to a teacher who'd had to grade essays in frankly atrocious English.

"We don't. Also, if anyone saw a man coming out of the Admiralty House after hours two nights ago with a satchel, we'd like to speak to him as well."

"Gotcha." He replied. "Anywun comin out a embassy wiv a bag'a papers and goin' along t' row, and anywun coming outa Admiralty House after hours two nights back."

"I'm authorized to pay the first day in advance." She said, before handing over eight shillings. "Anyone else should be in the coachyard at the Row tomorrow to get paid."

"Aye aye." The lad replied, before turning to give orders in an almost incomprehensible language, quickly sending various street Arabs sprinting off in various directions.

Grinning at the sheer eagerness of the paternoster irregulars, Clara turned and headed back to the stableyard, where a coach was being harnessed.

"Which way?" She called.

"Down past Saint Paul's." The man harnessing it replied. "We're picking up the earl of southsea from the station."

"Mind if I hitch a lift?" She asked, before a gesture indicated that she should clamber onto the bench next to the driver. "Sure thing." He replied, as she clambered up next to him, before taking a firm grip on the handrail.

The next few minutes were surprisingly restful, with little in the way of swearing, either from her travelling companion, or from other drivers.

"Where do you work?" He asked, once they were trotting along the main road.

"Paternoster row." She replied.

"Aye?" He said, smiling. "How's Jenny getting along these days?" He asked, smiling.

"She's in prison, apparently. She smacked a lordling at a house party of Madame's, and she ended up in front of the beak. He gave her a week to think things over behind bars."

"Tis a shame." He replied. "She's a nice enough lass."

"So I hear. Hard working, conscientious, and apparently the main support for Madame."

"Can you drop me by the corner?" She asked, as the coach clattered over the cobbles in front of Newgate.

"You don't want me to drop you by the door?" He asked.

"I'll be fine." She replied, before slipping him a shilling.

"You didn't need to do that, miss." He protested.

"Buy yourself a drink with it." She suggested. "I'm not paying you, in that regard."

"Thankee kindly." He responded, with a wink, before drawing the carriage to a half briefly so she could alight.

"See you." He said, before urging the horses into a trot again, as Clara strolled back to paternoster row.


	12. A prayer, and porridge

**Authors note: This chapter takes place at the same time as chapters ten and eleven. I would like to thank allmydesiredpennamesaretaken, TheBigCat and Son of Whitebeard for their kind reviews of the previous chapter. **

Jenny was jerked from a none-too-sound sleep on the unpadded slab of wood that served her as a mattress by a sudden pounding on the door.

"Get up. Church Parade!" A warder yelled through the door.

Still shaking the sleep from her mind, she stiffly turned over, before her body protested in agony, nearly dropping her to the floor with savage cramps in dozens of muscles the length of the body.

She couldn't help screaming in sudden pain, and a sudden burst of terror.

To her surprise, the hatch swung open.

"Are you lazy or something?" The warder demanded. "If you're not out of there in the next minute, I'll come and drag you out by the hair."

Frustrated, she forced her body to its feet, staggering slightly as she was forced to adjust for the irons fastened around her ankles.

"Move it." The man hissed, before pushing her in the direction of the main room in the women's wing of the prison, which she hadn't visited before.

Throughout the building, she could see dozens of prisoners making their way towards the room, and hear the banging of doors and hatches as the remainder were chivvied in the direction of the hall.

Inside, there was a space about the size of the main concourse of one of the smaller London stations, mostly filled with benches and tables, crudely constructed out of heavy planks of oak and held together by gravity and friction. At one end of the room, there was a space, empty except for a large group of people, her fellow prisoners, being formed into rough ranks by several warders, occasionally using their batons on prisoners apparently as a corrective measure, rather than the casual brutality Jenny read from their stances.

Reluctantly, she fell in; keeping her eyes straight ahead, except for a brief check on the prisoners either side of her to ensure that she wouldn't be attracting any attention from the prowling thugs.

It took ten minutes before the guards were happy, and had marched all of the prisoners into the room. Then one of the men knocked on a heavy wooden door, on top of a stage, with a small lectern.

A few moments later, a man bustled through the door, carrying a bible under his arm, along with several folded sheets of paper. His face was swarthy, with a narrow, beaked nose, and eyes that brought her in mind of the sort of men who hired the services of girls barely old enough to consent, before subjecting them to acts that would outrage even a pimp. She and Vastra had… she put the set of memories firmly back in their box, refusing to even think about what they'd found.

"Today's reading," He announced in the voice of the orator only tolerated because those he speaks to have no choice, "Will be from the book of Exodus, chapter twenty, verses thirteen to seventeen."

"Orf Hats!" The leading warder yelled, the response being the immediate removal of all items of headgear.

"Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shall not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbour. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shall not covet thy neighbour's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is thy neighbours." The priest finally paused for a moment, before continuing. "These are the words of the Lord, to his chosen people, gifted to his chosen prophet, the blessed Moses. These are words that many of you have breached. You have all sinned in the eyes of the Lord. All mankind are sinners, in His merciful eyes. Each of us carries a portion of the original sin upon our souls from the moment of our birth. It is our duty to repay the Lord for this, by acting kindly towards our fellow man. Many of you have treated your fellow man with violence, or treated his good thus. The Lord knows that all men sin, but he requires that we work to redeem ourselves." He stopped speaking for a moment.

_And what are your sins? _Jenny wondered. _That you allow your lusts to control your actions? That you treat young girls in a way that would sicken your bishop? That you willingly pay for carnal interactions? You are more of a criminal than anyone in this hall, but you stand in front of us, preaching about sin? How dare you!_ She didn't speak aloud any of her thoughts, and tried to keep them out of her posture.

"Despite our sins, the Lord loves all of us, as does any father. He only holds anger against those who harm their fellow children, in malice. Show him by your actions that you are remorseful, and he will grant you forgiveness. Work hard, and treat those placed over you with courtesy and respect." He paused again. "I will now read the Lord's prayer."

"Our father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen." He read; followed a moment later by a chorus of voices from the prisoners, who echoed the priest with little enthusiasm.

"Be seated." He announced, sending the prisoners filing onto their benches, each place set with a simple wooden bowl and a crude wooden spoon, deeply dished, and worn from long use. Once all of the prisoners were seated, a pair of guards went along each bench, using a small trolley, with a cauldron set into its surface, to serve each prisoner their porridge. Jenny held back from eating when she saw none of her fellow prisoner touch their spoons.

"Before we eat, we will say the grace." The priest announced, pompously. "May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all, now and evermore. Amen." Once the echoes of the unenthusiastic prayer had died away, and the ecclesiast had left the room, they began eating in silence.

The porridge was of a marginally better quality than her breakfast the previous morning, and appeared to have been made with oats freshly produced, rather than the week old, rat dropping infested sludge she'd been handed the previous day. Admittedly, the oats were ground far more finely than she would have accepted in the kitchen of Paternoster Row, and it appeared to have been made with water, rather than milk, but it tasted surprisingly good, for all that. She briefly raised her head from a servile, unthreatening bowed position, before glancing around.

_Two along, other side; child robbing for gin money. Five down, my side; poisoning her husband, non-fatally. One across, fifth seat; robbery with violence. Next to her, assault with a bladed article, put three policemen in the Royal Free Hospital._

Overall, she decided, the company wasn't exactly worth considering.

Once they'd eaten, the warders came around and collected all of the bowls and spoons, carefully counting them, before leaving the prisoners briefly to their own devices. Most just sat there, their heads bowed, and waited to be taken to their daily tasks.

Once again, Jenny was led into the long, hot room that held the treadmill. A handful of other prisoners were already turning the wheel, and she was briefly instructed to mount the wheel by a warder, idly smoking his pipe, a loaded shotgun across his knees, before a second warder, armed with a revolver, entered her name and the time she started onto a chart painted onto a chalkboard behind the desk where the two men sat, before starting what appeared to be a stopwatch once she was underway.

She was left marching around the wheel for ten minutes, before being allowed to dismount for a five minute break, again, timed. Then she was put back onto the wheel, again for ten minutes, and the routine was continued another thirty-nine times, until she was totally exhausted. During what she thought had been her twentieth break, although she wasn't sure about any of the timings, she had been given a bowl of cold stew, containing a mixture of simple root vegetables and some form of meat product, although which meat wasn't something she was particularly tempted to enquire about.

Barely able to stand, she was led back through a maze of cells to the small, dank room in which she was to spend the night, and more or less pushed through the door, which was then slammed shut behind her, before she heard the click of the lock sealing her inside for the night.

She huddled on the wooden slab that passed for a bed, pulling a thin cotton rag over her body to try and retain what warmth she could, too exhausted to even turn on her Gameboy. She was asleep within minutes.

What seemed to her a few short moments later, she was jerked awake by a sudden, very distinctive noise, one that she'd heard several times before. Wearily, she lifted her head, before extracting her Gameboy from its case, and turning it one.

The light from the screen revealed a familiar oblong, seconds before she was pounced on.

**Author's second note: This chapter required me to learn some additional skills, in order to write properly, as I am not overly religious. I also do not view the majority of priests the way I portray the unnamed prison priest in this chapter, for whom I can only blame Bernard Cornwell. I did write his "sermon" however. Nothing in this story was intended to offend the religiously inclined reader. Again, I would like to ask anyone who enjoys this story to post a review, or to send me a private message. One of these days, I fully intend to go back through this story with a beta-reader and correct all of my spelling and grammar issues.**


	13. Artful Dodger Case: A body on the tracks

It took several moments of rummaging in her pockets for Clara to locate the large key to the front door of thirteen Paternoster Row, most of which was spent playing 'is it in here? How about here?' before she finally located the key, and opened the front door, large by the standards she was used to.

Once she'd gratefully closed the door, resulting in at least a slight freshening of the air, she began to be able to hear the sounds of someone rhythmically assaulting a large sack of straw with some form of weapon, intermittently followed by a martial sounding _haiha_ or similar noise.

Out of curiosity, she tracked the noise down the hall, and into the kitchen, before localizing it to the cellar steps. Holding onto the guardrail, she descended into the room, to be met by several interesting sights.

On one wall, half concealed behind a wine rack, there was a rack of what looked like relatively modern assault rifles, with the overall design characteristics of a Kalashnikov series weapon, including the banana shaped magazine. Next to them, on a different rack, were sheathed swords, what looked like three full sets from tanto to no-dachi, offering a wide variety of options for turning most problems into several far smaller ones. Below the business weapons, there was a separate rack loaded with bokken, as she vaguely remembered wooden Japanese training weapons to be called. In a separate rack from both swords and rifles, she spotted three weapons made by placing a katana blade on top of a six foot pole, with leather covers protecting the blades.

Vastra was busy killing a large man made out of straw with what looked like the fire poker.

"Oi." Clara said, activating her schoolteacher tone. "Miss Vastra, put that poker down this instant."

She was only mildly surprised when Vastra seemed to react without thought, placing the poker on a small table, before stepping back.

"Clara." She greeted the human. "Are the irregulars loose?"

"Yes, I've turned out the irregulars, and I've paid them up front." Clara replied. "Why were you using a poker to beat up a training dummy?" She asked.

To her surprise, Vastra shuffled her feet briefly before replying. "Jenny never lets me use the poker when she's around. I wanted to see what it is about it that makes it such a popular weapon."

Clara couldn't help rolling her eyes slightly. "It's simply a very available chunk of metal with a long handle." She replied. "No mystic energies, no other powers. Just a lump of metal, on a stick."

"I see." Vastra replied, before there was a sudden clatter in the street outside, as what sounded like a cab drew up outside the house, followed closely by a pair of boots hurrying up the steps to the front door, then a hammering on it.

"Clara, be a dear and get the door, will you?" Vastra instructed. "I'll be in my sitting room. Bring some tea with you, as well."

Clara snapped off a salute which could only be described as sarcastic, before hurrying to the doorway.

Once she'd negotiated the chain, which she couldn't remember fastening herself, she pulled the door open, revealing the figure of a suspicious looking man beyond.

The man wasn't as tall as the doctor, and had a small frame, even by Victorian standards. He had a narrow face, with dark, narrow eyes, and an unhealthy looking sallow complexion. He was smartly dressed, with a bowler, although his clothes showed signs of what looked like mud and dirt, and his bowler was somewhat battered, although by no means disreputable.

"Is Madame Vastra at home? He asked, with a slightly musical accent that put her in mind of a more guttural version of a south wales accent. "We've got something that I think will pique her interest."

"And who shall I say is calling?" She asked, before he handed her a card.

The card read: 'Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade, Scotland Yard CID.'

"I think she is, sir." She replied, with a curtesy, before using the detective inside. "May I conduct you to the drawing room?"

"Certainly, miss…?"

"Oswald, sir."

"Lead the way, Miss Oswald." He said, with a slight smile, which broadened as she borrowed his bowler, before placing it on the coat stand.

"Coats and hats at the door, please." She said, before taking his coat and hanging it up as well.

"Usually, Miss Oswald, Jenny leaves that to Mr Strax." Lestrade said with a wink, before following her to the drawing room, reading his notebook.

Once she reached the drawing room, Clara darted back to the kitchen for the tea-tray, knowing that even Vastra couldn't evade the preliminary niceties of Victorian society, such as discussing the weather, mutual acquaintances, and presumably, previous cases. Unlike a recent version of Sherlock Holmes she'd seen, Vastra wasn't a rude being, although, to be fair, the character of Holmes wasn't rude, just unconcerned with social niceties.

Quickly, she extracted a pot-full of boiling water from the stove, having left a large urn on in anticipation of large amounts of tea being required. Into it, she dropped three teaspoons worth of loose tea-leaves, before placing the lid back on the teapot, then gathering a jug of milk, holding about a pint, before loading three cups onto a tea-tray, along with saucers, a small packet of rich tea biscuits, and the highly vital silver teaspoons. She placed the teapot on the tray, before carefully balancing it and walking through to the drawing room.

The door was closed when she approached, so she, after considering the options, decided to resort to kicking the door several times, at which point the inspector opened the door with a polite nod.

"Madame insisted we wait for the tea before we get down to details." He said, before extracting a small leather bag, akin to a glasses case, then removing a relatively small clay pipe, almost black from long use, and pinching a handful of tobacco into it, before adding a match produced from a plain matchbook, and quickly producing a fug of smoke that would make any 21st century smoke alarm sound in sheer fury.

"Inspector, do you have to smoke that thing in here?" Vastra asked. "Clara, darling, would you get the window?"

Bending low, Clara quickly poured a cup for Vastra, putting the milk in first, then moving to the sash window, and quickly opening it, before standing back, in an at-ease pose, and allowing the meeting to progress.

"We've got an unusual one." Lestrade said, flicking open his notebook. "Last night, we had a report of a young man going missing near the Admirality, one of the clerks there, going by the name of Arthur West. He and his fiancée were returning from the theatre, having viewed Mr Wilde's 'The Importance of Being Earnest,' when Mr West, upon passing his workplace, suddenly took off, after passing a man in the fog, with an instruction that if he did not return within ten minutes, his fiancée, a Miss Parker, should make her way in haste to the station at Charing Cross, and request the assistance of a constable. Upon her arrival at the front desk, she was near to hysterics, and it took three cups of tea to calm her down, and that was when we got the story. My colleague Inspector Hackett was on the night shift, and turned out, with a number of his constables and two sergeants to scour the area, although they found no-one. We photo-telegraphed his description and photograph to all of the stations in London this morning, before I was summoned to a report of a man being thrown from an underground carriage at Westminster bridge road. One of the porters saw him suddenly appear from the rear of the train just as it left the station, and sent a runner to Kennington police station, from whence a constable was dispatched, and the line was halted to allow recovery of the body. Once the constable had retrieved the body, which had a very severe head injury, he searched the pockets, finding no sign of a robbery. The man's pockets contained cards and a theatre ticket stub, both in the name of Mr Arthur West. At that point, I was summoned via telegraph, and, after examining the body, I came straight here."

"I see." Vastra said, after a moment. "Why didn't you have the train stopped at the next station, and searched?"

"By the time we were alerted, it had already passed, and stopped at, Waterloo station. We've got a sergeant and two constables interviewing the staff, but frankly we're not hopeful."

"Have you got the train?" Vastra asked?

"We managed to have it stopped at bond street, and diverted into a siding, due to a damaged brake, and we paid for onwards journeys out of our sundries budget. We've already been through it, and there was precious little to see, but we want you to have a look before we release it, just in case you can find any clues that we've missed."

"Very well, Inspector." Vastra said, picking up her tea and taking a not so delicate sip. "I'll accompany you presently. Clara, would you go down to the telegraph office, next to St Pauls, and send our visitor from this morning a telegram asking for details of any staff assigned to his project?"

"Certainly, Ma'am." Clara said, before Vastra handed her a card.

"Here are his details." She said, before finishing her tea, and heading for the door.

**Author's note: This is turning into a story I never envisaged when I published the initial chapters, and going from a story about Victorian prison to a homage to Sherlock Holmes, with Doctor Who characters thrown in, even for me, is a new leap.**

**I would like to thank TheBigCat, Son of Whitebeard, Pixel and Stephanie Forever, Allmydesiredpennamesaretaken, Ceridwyn2 and an Unnamed Guest for their kind reviews. I will be fixing a few errors before the next update, mostly caused by updating this story at around midnight uk time.**

**Again, if anyone enjoys this story, I greatly hope that they'd be kind enough to post a review.**


	14. Artful Dodger Case: Visiting the scene

Clara hurried up the road, having spotted the telegraph office earlier, before darting inside.

Inside, there were several workmen writing on pads, along with a better-off client, judging by his coat and hat, who was directly dictating his longer message to a harassed looking clerk.

"Look, I said 'Aldengate council meeting on the fifth of March, stop. You are hereby requested to attend by the chairman, stop. We will be discussing your proposal, stop.' You've persistently mis-copied my statements."

"Excuse me, sir." Clara asked. "Why don't you write it down yourself?"

"Excuse me?" He gobbled. "Who are you to ask such a question as that?"

"I'm the person behind you in the queue." She replied, politely.

"And I'm the leader of Aldengate borough council." He replied.

"Who are you sending your message to?" She replied, in a extremely dangerously meek tone of voice, as if overawed by the personage she was addressing.

"I'm sending an important message to Sir John Edwards, about a excellent proposal for a modern workhouse in the borough."

In response, she dipped into a pocket, and simply produced a small square of cardboard.

It read ' Admiral the Lord Camperdown, Admiralty House, London."

"I, ah. I apologise." He said, suddenly realising exactly how much power he was potentially crossing.

"Don't worry about it." She replied, with a flick of her head towards the pads.

He took the hint, and moved across.

"Thanks." The clerk whispered. "He thinks being a senior council official makes him a big-shot, and he has just enough actual influence to make himself a nuisance."

"I guessed." Clara said with a wink. "I need you to send an urgent message to the Admiralty."

"Certainly, miss...?"

"Oswald. Clara Oswald." She replied, grinning slightly at one of the things most people wanted to say in the 21st century.

"Message to read: Attention of Admiral the Lord Camperdown. Was Arthur West employed on the matter upon which you consulted with M. Vastra today?"

"How urgent?" The clerk asked.

"If you can get it on his desk within five minutes, it'd be worth half a guinea to you, and half a guinea to the messenger boy."

"Aye aye." The man said, before turning to the back of the shop, and rapidly tapping out the message in Morse code.

A perhaps three minutes later, the tickertape machine in the corner of the office suddenly sprang into life.

"A.W. employed on A.D. News?"

"Send back; 'A.W. found on underground, deceased.'" Clara instructed, before leaving two half crowns and three shillings in payment. "Send a further telegram to X police station: "A.W. employed on A.D. confirmed." Clara smiled. "Hopefully, you can arrange prompt delivery." She said, before politely nodding, and exiting the shop.

-0-0-0-0-0-

Any journey through central London was a minor penance for Vastra. The sheer variety and number of smells, most of them disgusting to anyone with a working nose, never mind one as sensitive as hers. For Vastra, a ride in a open cab was like being repeatedly hit in the mouth and nose with a club, only less pleasant. She could smell old pools of vomit a week old, along with traces of blood from dozens of fights, as the cab rapidly trotted through the streets to reach the Thames. At that point, smells such as tar and hemp became present, along with other aromas, such as raw sewage, the occasional rotting corpse, and a certain amount of rotting fish. There was also a smell of seaweed.

It didn't take the cab long to arrive at New Scotland Yard, once it had reached the Thames. The building was one of the most modern in government use, having been built specifically by and for the use of the metropolitan police service, and included a state of the art morgue, complete with a working refrigerator for the storage of bodies recovered from crime scenes and awaiting a post-mortem.

The officer on the door recognised Vastra, and saluted, receiving a nod in return. Inside, Lestrade led the way straight to the morgue, both his workmanlike patent leather boots, which were both glossy and able to withstand kicking down a door, and Vastra's high heeled boots, rattling on the wooden floors, and trailing salutes from various officers.

When they reached the morgue, Vastra was more than slightly surprised by the temperature, which wasn't much below room temperature in the rest of the building. She stood well away from the fridge as the door was opened, as refrigeration and ectotherms do not mix, and the last thing she wanted to door was collapse from the cold, particularly since she hadn't had access to her human hot-water bottle for two nights in a row.

"Arthur West, aged twenty-four." Lestrade said, filling in for the pathologist, who had had a falling out with Vastra over 'perks', which she had not approved of, leading them to avoid one another. "Cause of death; massive blow to the head. Everything in his pockets is on the table over there."

Carefully, Vastra examined the body, carefully examining the head injury, which had crushed the frontal cortex, presumably sending shards of bone deep into the brain. It appeared to have been delivered by a weapon no more than five inches in diameter.

"His clothes are in disarray." Lestrade observed, as she moved her careful examination down the body. "There must have been a struggle."

"There is what looks like clay on the sole of his right boot." Vastra observed.

"Any use?" Lestrade asked.

"It narrows down the area he boarded the train." Vastra replied. "He must have boarded it at elephant and castle."

"How do you…"

"That is the only area south of the Thames where he could have both picked up that soil and boarded that service, prior to Westminister Bridge Road, where he was thrown from the train." Vastra said, in a matter of fact tone.

"You think we should focus our enquiries in the area?"

"No." Vastra replied. "I think you should focus them at Whitehall. See if there was anyone who had had cross words with the young man, or had been involved in a dispute with him. Check his private life. Were there any rivals for Miss Parker? Was he in debt, and if so to who?"

After issuing those instructions, or at least suggestions that might have sounded like instructions, Vastra moved over to the contents of the man's pockets.

The first thing she picked up was his watch, a silver cased hunter. The glass was smashed when she opened it, and the hands had stopped at 23:10.

"What time did he fall from the carriage?" She asked.

"About half past eight this morning. I wasn't on the scene until ten." Lestrade explained.

"Then either he took a fall the previous night, in the fog, and damaged it then, or he was killed earlier."

"Madame, I know the people on the tube well enough to know that there is no way a body could remain undiscovered in a carriage for more than a short time."

"I can think of one." Vastra replied.

"Wh… Of course." Lestrade replied.

"Check with anyone using the train this morning. Did they see a policeman exiting the end carriage at Waterloo?"

"Aye aye." Lestrade said, before Vastra began checking the other items, before finding a sheaf of papers.

"What do we…? She mused, before recognising the lettering on them.

"Lestrade, I'm going to need you to leave the room." She said, doing her best to smile apologetically at the detective.

"Two minutes, Vastra." He said. "I can justify leaving you alone with the body for that long."

"That'll be all I need." She replied.

Once the detective had left the room, she went through the papers rapidly. Several pages were missing, but the rest were all from the Admiralty and depicted the plans for the submarine codenamed Artful Dodger. Quickly, she swapped them with a pile of bills from a restaurant near his lodgings, admittedly that she'd been the actual benefactor from, and pocketed the actual papers before the Inspector returned.

"I've seen all I need to." She said. I want to see the carriage, now."

Fortunately, Vastra wasn't forced to use the cab again, Lestrade having access to an official, not to mention enclosed, carriage, that was used to transport senior officials to and from crime scenes.

The carriage, by the time Vastra arrived, had been backed into a open siding, and several arc lamps had been set up to illuminate the scene, with the able assistance of the winter sun.

"Clear all of your officers out the the carriage." Vastra instructed Lestrade, made somewhat more waspish than usual by the combination of cold weather and several days without proper food, given that Strax had never quite mastered the concept of cooking, requiring Vastra to subsist on unaccompanied meat alone, without any of the trimmings that Jenny never let her leave the table without eating.

To be honest, she'd started off disliking things such as roast potato, mint sauce, parsnips and gravy, seeing them as useless vegetation with no reason for her to eat them.

Then, eventually, Jenny had, well, cajoled her, into actually trying the various items that accompanied her meals, and the Silurian had been amazed at the flavours that rolled off of her tastebuds and into her pleasure centres. She still preferred her meat raw, however, although Jenny was working on that as well, mostly using spices and herbs that only worked on cooked meat while cooking in order to tempt Vastra.

Once the area was clear, Vastra could very clearly smell blood, and considerable quantities of it. She carefully tracked it toward the carriage, before grimly clambering inside, knowing that another assault was in the offing.

Inside, there was a brutal wall of smells, including stale beer, vomit and blood, which she quickly tracked to a small splattering on the wall of the carriage. Carefully, she examined the other wall, the floor and the ceiling, searching with a magnifying glass coupled with silurian vision for any other traces of blood. There were a few other stains, all old, and barely detectable without her eyes, even with her nose a few millimetres above the stains themselves, there was only the faintest aroma of blood.

She carefully backed into the centre of the carriage, before looking around for signs of a struggle, or anything else out of place. There were a few scuff marks, but nothing else in any way indicative of a violent killing.

_So where was the blood I smelt outside coming from?_ Vastra wondered.

Carefully, she tracked the scent of blood through the carriage, all of the way to the open door.

"Inspector!" She called. "I require a ladder."

A few moments later, a ladder was produced from a small hut nearby, the door of which had been broken before the sergeant lent against it from five feet away.

Vastra didn't actually need the ladder, but clambering onto the roof of a carriage using her claws would have raised eyebrows, and that might have affected her retainer.

Once she had negotiated the stepladder, the roof flexed slightly as she stepped onto it, and the surface felt sticky underfoot, which keyboard roofing shouldn't have. The smell of blood was overwhelming as she looked down, to find a pool of human blood.

"Inspector!" She called. "Take a look at this."

A moment later, Lestrade nimbly clambered up the ladder, to be confronted with a massive pool of blood.

"How...?" He spluttered. "These carriages don't have a roof hatch."

"I haven't any idea, inspector." She replied.

**Author notes: I'd like to thank Son of Whitebeard, allmydesiredpennamesaretaken, kmcmillen423, Ceridwyn2, TheBigCat and an unnamed guest for their kind reviews to the latest chapter. This story is a hell of a long way from being over.**


	15. Interlude three, part one: A good meal

Once she got back from the telegraph office, Clara began to feel somewhat hungry. The last meal she had had was a local equivalent of a McDonalds meal, with chips and a medium sized burger. That had been about five hours previously, although she'd saved some of the chips for later, in the TARDIS equivalent of a doggy bag, which had also been used by the Doctor to transport various authentic Roman delicacies for her history class to try.

Inside the kitchen, she quickly located the pantry, which had been subdivided into two large cupboards and a smaller cupboard. The large cupboards were marked "Vastra" and "Jenny", while the small cupboard had "Strax" written on it. Clara decided very quickly that she didn't want to investigate what Vastra had in her cupboard, and opened Jenny's. Inside, there was a selection of breakfast cereals, along with several baskets of seasonal root vegetables, and a rack of cuts of meat.

Carefully, Clara extracted two cuts of meat, what would have been known as rump steaks on a restaurant menu, before placing them on a metal tray.

Once they were on the tray, she extracted a stock of potatoes from another part of the cupboard, before carefully peeling them, then slicing them into quarters and arranging them on the tray, along with whole carrots and parsnips, then drizzled the whole dish with a cooking oil, before sprinkling herbs and seasonings onto the oiled meat, finishing the dish with a thin coating of paprika.

Once the main dish was in the oven, Clara turned her attention to other matters. Having already found the wine and other alcohol store, she extracted a bottle of Italian red, stored in the 'meat' section of the rack by a previous occupant, and cracked it open, pouring a measure into a gravy boat. She added a small amount of chilli powder to the wine, before covering it well away from the stove.

It took three hours for the meat to cook, which Clara spent planning several lessons for her class, assuming she could get them to go anywhere near the blue box after last time.

About halfway through the cooking process, the sound of a carriage rattled through the yard, before Vastra entered the building via the kitchen door, before almost wrapping herself around the Aga as soon as the door was shut.

"Ma'am?" Clara asked. "why are you doing that?"

There was no answer for about a minute.

"Ma'am?" Clara asked again, hearing what sounded suspiciously like purring noises coming from the vicinity of the stove.

"Sorry." Vastra said after another pregnant silence. "I needed that."

"Needed what?" Clara asked, slightly confused.

"When Jenny calls me a lizard, Clara, she isn't being inexact, from a biological perspective, at least. I can't generate my own body heat. Couple that with being outside today, and I need heat urgently." Vastra explained, still curled up against the Aga.

"I see." Clara replied. "I need to check on dinner." She explained, holding up a ladle. "If you want some additional heat, I'm sure that Strax will stoke the fire for you."

At that point, she more or less chased Vastra out of the kitchen, not holding the ladle in the overtly threatening fashion Jenny sometimes did, but simply holding a two pound copper ladle a foot long.

Once the meat had finished cooking, she carefully drained the juices from both meat and vegetables into the gravy boat, before raiding one of the other cupboards for drinking vessels, extracting a silver pint mug engraved "Vastra", along with a simple glass for herself.

Once she'd laid the table, using more silver tableware than she'd seen in one place outside of a museum display case, and placed a steak knife by each of the two plates, she called Vastra in from where the silurian had been huddling next to a fire.

The initial result was surprising.

"Clara, why have you cooked mine?" Vastra asked, looking very unsure.

"Because it was the only way to ensure it tasted right." She replied, before adding; "cooked meat won't exactly kill you."

Clara sat down on the chair, an classic example of the Victorian carpenter's art, with silk upholstery and very comfortable padding. She didn't get too comfortable, though, and quickly had her ladle out.

"That's the gravy jug!" She said, watching the progress of the vessel. "It goes on the meat, not in your glass."

"It smells like a drink." Vastra explained, clearly having been civilized enough over several years living with Jenny to have mastered cutlery, as she wasn't actually struggling to eat with it.

"Drink comes out of the decanter or the bottle." Clara replied, passing over the bottle of red wine. "Not the gravy jug."

There was a hiss from the silurian, followed by a menacing brandishing of the two pound copper ladle. "Behave." Clara said.

Reluctantly, or at least it seemed that way, Vastra accepted the wine, before pouring herself a generous measure.

"It was a gift from Jenny." She said, holding up the silver mug. "Our wedding was in the twenty-fifth century, as marriages between women are a very grey area with the local apes. We had to lie about my species even then, and claim I was from Elune. We then edited the wedding certificate, and put it in my safe. Wedding presents were off the menu, as we couldn't invite anyone, so we brought each other presents instead. Jenny chose the most powerfully meat scented paper for my presents, but we avoided egg poachers and toast racks, at least." The silurian smiled slightly at the memory.

"I wish I'd been invited."Clara replied, not in the slightest bit purely from politeness.

The meat, as it turned out, was done to perfection, with the various herbs and spices she'd sprinkled over it, following a recipe from a folded page in one of Jenny's larger cookbooks, setting off the meat perfectly. The wine tasted slightly of pitch, but otherwise the blend of fruits and berries set off the meat nicely. Vastra had received a somewhat larger portion of meat than Clara, and had quite happily dealt with the three pounds of steak, without earning a single blow from the ladle for table manners.

Unfortunately, she'd also had most of the wine, and several times had been whacked with the ladle for trying to drink from the bottle. There had been a tap each time she tried to pour the wine into her glass without offering any to Clara, which had avoided degeneration into an outright wrestling match over possession of the bottle only because of the presence of the table and crockery.

Once dinner was finished, Clara was surprised to see an actual bulge in Vastra's stomach, representing the final home of three pounds of rump steak, a pound of potatoes and half a pound of carrots and parsnips. Clara, in comparison, had had eight ounces of rump steak, and in total, a pound of vegetables, split nine ounces of potatoes and seven of carrots and parsnips. Vastra had also downed the best part of a bottle of wine, despite Clara's best efforts to have some as well, and had eventually managed to sneak a third of the gravy into her mug before being caught.

Finally, they adjourned for a final discussion of the case.

"Clara, what did you find out about the deceased?" Vastra asked.

"No gambling debts, only a social drinker, no known contacts within the embassy quarter, although several diplomats had approached him in his club with money for news." Clara reeled off. "His relationship with Miss Parker seems to have been monogamous, despite several approaches from other staff."

"What was his current project?" Vastra asked, already knowing the answer.

"Artful Dodger." Clara replied. "He was one of the draftsmen working on the design."

"Which would explain these." Vastra said, smoothing out a number of relatively simple diagrams for ballast chambers and the periscope, among other components.

"Where's the steering assemblage, or the torpedo tube mechanism?" Clara asked, after a moment.

Vastra flicked through the plans briefly, before hissing what sounded like several random syllables.

"I knew this was too easy." She said.

Then there was a polite knock on the door of the drawing room.

"Enter."Vastra called, before Strax opened the door.

"The Doctor to see Madame Vastra and Miss Clara Oswald." Strax announced, carrying a frock coat over one arm.

"Doctor." Vastra said, with a smile. "What a pleasant surprise."

"Ah, I know." He replied, seemingly as grumpy as ever. "I've got tickets for a film I thought you two might be interested in, which is why I popped in." He replied, quickly cadging a biscuit from the plate on the tea-table.

"Which one?" Clara asked.

"They're calling it 'The empire strikes back', for now. I'm told the swordfighting sequences are worth watching." He said.

There was a muttering from Vastra. "useless human rubbish and about as realistic as their customs." Vastra hissed, in what Clara realised was silurian. Her aim with the ladle was precise.

The silurian rubbed her nose for several seconds, before muttering something too quiet to hear, with a glance that Clara hoped she was misinterpreting.

"Anyway, are you two interested?" The Doctor asked.

"Yes." Clara replied.

"Only if I can take Jenny." Vastra said, seemingly sulking over the ladle throwing.

"I think we can arrange that." The Doctor replied, with a grin. "I've got us tickets to the premiere."

"How did you...?" Clara began, before he waggled a square of apparently blank paper at her.

"Shall we?" He asked, before leading the way to the TARDIS.

Once they were inside, and he'd shut the doors, the Doctor busied himself with the control panel.

"These short trips, I hate these. Why couldn't they have put her in Edinburgh, or Liverpool?" He grumbled, before pulling the lever.

The flight only lasted a few short seconds, before they touched down and the Doctor opened the door.

"Cell 273, Newgate prison." He announced, shortly before Vastra darted out through the door and pounced on a still groggy Jenny. There was a squeal as she landed.

**I would like to thank Son of Whitebeard for posting the only review, at the time of writing, to the previous chapter. As usual, please give me nice reviews. I'm always interested to her people's ideas and comments.**


	16. I3P2: A wash, and some new clothes

As soon as she was out of the door, Vastra's nostrils had been filled by the scent of her wife. She hadn't been able to help herself, and had instinctively pounced on Jenny.

"Ma'am..." Jenny weezed, from underneath the siliurian; "I need air."

Hesitantly, Vastra climbed off of her wife, before almost gently picking her up and just holding her, their lips brushing at first, before interlinking shortly afterwards.

"She'll need a shower before you can bring her in here." The Doctor stated, standing with his arms crossed in the doorway to the TARDIS.

"You've got a shower." Clara stated, fulfilling her usual role as the Doctor's morality pet. "Her cell hasn't."

"Don't be silly." He grumbled. "Every cell on a developed planet has a shower. It's usually written into some law."

"This one doesn't." Clara hissed. "Now, let her in."

"Fine." The Doctor replied. "But if she stinks up my bathroom, you're cleaning it out."

"If you say so." Clara replied, before pulling the Time Lord out of the doorway.

"Ahem." She said, using the same tone she had when ordering Vastra to behave earlier in the day. "We haven't got all day."

Reluctantly, the pair broke apart, before Vastra led the way into the TARDIS.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-

Jenny followed Clara through the TARDIS hallways, astonished at the size of the ship, even knowing from past experience how large it actually was. The other human seemed to know her way around the key areas of the ship, however, and within minutes they had arrived in the palatial bathroom. Bronze fittings and marble baths filled part of the room, along with a row of showers, each with an individual stained glass door, showing a major structure or city from Gallifrey. There was another door at the far end.

"Where does that lead?" Jenny asked, out of genuine curiosity.

"To the swimming pool, and the sauna, and quite possibly a massage room and plunge pool." Clara replied. "I've never found a room it doesn't have when needed."

"Clara...?" Jenny asked, suddenly very aware of the fact that her ankles were connected together with heavy blackened steel irons. "Can you get these things off me?"

Clara knelt down carefully, annoying Jenny by not even stroking her calf briefly, before producing a small device from her pocket, which hummed slightly, before the shackle on her right ankle opened. A moment and another hum later, the shackle dropped away from her left ankle as well.

"Are there any bath materials I can use?" Jenny asked, very aware that her stock of soap was still on the shelf in the main bathroom at paternoster row.

"If you need anything, take it out of the cupboard." Clara replied. "Check the allergy information on each though. Some of this stuff isn't safe for Levo species, and some of it does nasty things to human skin."

"Levo?" Jenny asked, not understanding the term.

"Levo amino acids. Some species the TARDIS stocks for appear to have been based on Dextro amino acids."

"What?"

"I don't have time for it now." Clara replied. "If it says dextro on the bottle, don't use it."

"Right..." Jenny said, looking slightly unnerved by some of the things Clara was saying.

"Anyway, we'll be landing in about twenty minutes, so..." She made a shooting gesture, and Jenny immediately began to clamber out of her clothes, not even waiting for Clara to turn her back.

"Do you mind?" Clara hissed, reddening slightly as she spun around.

"I don't." Jenny replied.

"Not that." Clara hissed. "Give me some warning next time."

"Oh." Jenny said, having momentarily forgotten that some eras had odd nudity taboos, or possibly that Clara wasn't interested in her.

Once the prison clothes were off, Clara disappeared them, before allowing Jenny to get on with the important business of choosing her shower gel. There were literally hundreds of options, some of which seemed rather unusual. "Nabooan mountain valley." Jenny read off of one bottle, the label of which was written in angular characters, none of which seemed to make sense to her, although she could read it, somehow. "The authentic scents of a valley in the famous blue mountains of Naboo during the spring, with mountain sunflowers, dusky primose and dawn sundrops, along with the warming scent of hot chocolate with just a hint of Correlian whiskey." She put the bottle, which seemed to be made out of a substance she'd never encountered before, to one side, having taken a sniff of the contents. The next bottle was even more interesting. The label was written in a flowing script that seemed to translate itself into English as she read. "A preparation of cleansing herbs and flowers from Du Weldenvarden, with extracts of blueberry, bluebell and snowdrop essence for scent." It went next to the first. Then she found "Flowers of Thessia: a collection of Asari flowering plants, combined with a gentle cleanser, designed for use by any species and to raise flagging spirits." She picked it off the shelf, before heading into one of the showers.

Inside, it was a almost cavernous space, considering its purpose. Multiple bronze shower heads, decorated with delicate etchings, loomed overhead, with a shelf large enough for a huge selection of gels, shampoo and conditioner, which made her lone bottle of shower gel look rather lonely. On one wall, there was a control panel, which displayed a huge range of options when touched. The menus included everything from 'removing Deneb VII sewer slime' to 'morning mist'. She chose a option near the top, marked 'cleansing."

Almost instantly, the four shower heads burst into life, cascading warm water onto her, as she luxuriated in the perfect temperature and clean flow.

It took her several minutes of warm water to remember what came next, and to rub on the shower gel, which included the instruction "work into crest gently, using fingertips, and rinse with warm water." She ignored that, and simply rubbed it vigorously all over herself, taking huge comfort from the sensation of warmth and relaxation that the aroma of the gel produced. It lasted for ten heady minutes, during which time she turned the spray down to 'morning mist', bathing in the fine, warm spray of droplets, until finally, she reluctantly turned off the shower.

While she'd been showering, someone had laid out a selection of clothes, providing a number of knee to ankle length dresses decorated with a variety of animal patterns and floral designs. She chose a close fitting silk dress, with a crocodile skin pattern, the size of the scales varying from the size of her smallest fingernail to better than an inch across, in a very fetching jungle green. She accompanied the dress with a full set of twentith century underwear, somehow sized to perfection, and a pair of smart boots, with a short heel.

When she returned to the control room, Vastra pounced immediately.

"Next time, you silly little ape, I'll leave you to rot." She told Jenny, nibbling one of her earlobes tenderly.

"Who'd make the tea?" Jenny asked, nuzzling the siliurian under the chin, and gently stroking the soft scales with her tongue.

"You have a point." Vastra replied. "I'll need someone to make tea."

"I love you too." Jenny replied, grinning slightly. "I won't mention some of the times I've bailed you out of trouble."

"There was only that time with the bank robber." Vastra said, defensively.

"You're forgetting when you nearly ate an undercover detective, that time with the meat freezer down at the docks, not to mention when you were nearly arrested for obstruction."

There was a grumpy hiss from the siliurian.

"Stop that." Jenny responded. "I'll make you some tea in a bit."

Then Vastra suddenly wrapped her tongue around the human's neck, and forced her head upwards, before kissing her gently and tenderly.

"Er, Vastra, you need some different clothes." Clara broke in, after the clinch had been going for about a minute.

"Why?" Vastra asked, keeping her tongue firmly wrapped around her wife's neck.

"Because Victorian evening dress, particularly a veil, is liable to stand out just a bit at a American movie premiere."

"I see." Vastra said, before being gently tapped on the crest by Jenny.

"Go and get changed, you daft lizard." Jenny said, putting her foot down firmly, and unwrapping the prehensile tongue from around her neck.

Vastra shuffled slightly, before reluctantly hobbling away towards the dressing room, shepherded by Clara.

When they arrived, the TARDIS had laid out a selection of garments, all of which were floor length, and emphasized Vastra's figure. Each garment had a set of opera gloves with it, along with a hat and attached veil that fitted with period fashion. There were no boots attached to any of the garments.

"I'll be changing if you want me." Clara said, before ducking behind a screen, and extracting her formal dress, which varied little from the red number she'd worn when meeting Robin Hood, except for lacking the ornate sleeves and the forehead adornment.

Quickly, she clambered into it, very aware of the siliurian on the opposite side of the screen, not to mention her gender preferences. It took her perhaps ten seconds to switch clothes, or rather, to pull off her vest, unbutton and discard the long sleeved white shirt, and haul the replacement dress on over her head. Once she was guaranteed to be decent, she was able to relax while removing the plain black dress from underneath the red dress.

Once she had changed, she used another door to exit the room, avoiding any chance of an entanglement with the siliurian that she would almost certainly find uncomfortable, and heading back to the control room.

Inside, Jenny was receiving a brief tutorial on how to fly the TARDIS, using the controls, rather than the psychic matrix. Clara smiled at the way the Victorian girl was almost bouncing with excitement, although a casual observer without the experience of a teacher would probably have missed the slight rocking on the balls of her feet that indicated her enjoyment. Finally, though, the Doctor took control of the TARDIS again, before making a careful and controlled landing.

**Authors note: I would like to thank Son of Whitebeard, Ceridwyn2, and wHOUFFLE for reviewing the previous chapter. I would also like to state that I do not ship Clara/Vastra or Clara/Jenny, and that I leave that to the characters themselves. I'd also like to pay tribute to the British aid worker Allen Henning, whose murder by Islamic terrorists was despicable and cowardly, and demonstrates how far from the true teachings of their faith they have deviated **


	17. I3P3: Visiting a cinema, and snacks

The air outside of the TARDIS was very different to the air that they'd been breathing while boarding it. It was crisp, and dry, rather than damp and clinging. Jenny, although she hadn't told Vastra, had begun to feel tight-chested while she was incarcerated, and had begun coughing at night. She was still moving awkwardly from having spent two days with her ankles fastened together, lifting her feet far higher than normal, and taking shorter, more rapid strides to counter having her stride reduced to two feet. It wasn't noticeable unless you were looking for it, but it was there.

The TARDIS had landed in a small alley, adjacent to the theatre.

The party walked out, carefully blending into the crowd of well dressed reporters, film critics and the inevitable woman from the film morality group, who'd been invited on the basis that it was better to have her pissing on the film having seen it, and having been given as much complimentary bubbly and little things on toast as she wanted, than pissing from the outside of the theatre, having not been invited, and thereby encouraged to describe the film as about devil worshipping cults who believe that they can do anything that God can.

The first minor obstacle was the inevitable officious little sod at the entrance, armed with a clipboard, a pencil and a attitude that Gandalf would have approved of.

"Excuse me, _sir."_ He said, as the Doctor walked up to him. "Can I see your invitation?" The stress he put on sir would have started a fight in most bars or clubs Clara was familiar with, suggesting that the Doctor was something unpleasant attached to the bottom of his shoe.

"Here you go." He growled, brandishing his omnipresent strip of psychic paper. "Now get out of the way, you tiresome little human."

"What did you just call me?" The man asked, with the tell-tale glee of the tin-god with a clipboard who has just found a reason to object to something minor.

"I called you what you are." The Time Lord growled. "A tiresome, petty, self important human who thinks because he has a clipboard and some tiny shred of authority, he runs the world."

"You can't speak to me like that." The man objected.

"Wrong. I just did, and I can do so indefinitely until things change. Now _get out of my way._"

Reluctantly, the man scuttled to one side, being unable to find a valid reason to actually object to their passage. The admittance card had looked the same as the rest he'd seen all evening, and listed four names he couldn't quite read.

Once they were past the outer cordon, Clara turned to Jenny and Vastra.

"This may seem odd to you, but in this place and time, two women holding hands is an open invitation to discrimination and ejection. So is two women kissing each other."

There was a slightly sullen look on what was visible of Vastra's face, and Jenny didn't look much happier than her wife.

"I find it as strange as you do." She hissed. "But if you can obey for about the next two hours, everything will fix itself."

The look she received in return suggested that a six foot long tongue was about to make a serious attempt at penetrating her ribcage.

"I didn't make the rules." She muttered. "I'm just making sure we don't all end up spending the night in what passes for a prison over here."

Vastra didn't react for a couple of seconds, before finally making a face that suggested they'd be having words later.

A few moments later, besuited ushers began gathering people up, before taking each group to their seats.

Being a premiere, substances such as popcorn hadn't been provided, and were replaced by gourmet foods and drinks. Clara noticed the rather firm way that Jenny confiscated the first glass of champagne to come Vastra's way, before gently slapping the siliurian's hand when she reached for it. It didn't take her long, though, to come up with a plan. Taking full advantage of possessing a prehensile tongue, with several abilities, Vastra slowly extended it out of the corner of her mouth, before dipping it into the champagne flute without Jenny noticing.

On screen, Luke Skywalker was busy searching for a probe droid, and the slam of Jenny's hand onto the offending tongue very neatly coincided with the droid blowing up, avoiding attention falling on the siliurian now retracting a somewhat bruised tongue.

"You silly old thing, you know that champagne is bad for you." Jenny hissed, along advantage of the screaming tauntaun on screen to cover the sentence.

Vastra hissed back, slightly muffled.

"Later." Jenny murmured.

The response was almost a purring noise, suggestive of a cross between a small cute feline and a concrete mixer.

"Behave." Jenny ordered her wife, using the quiet tone that usually accompanied a three pound ladle swinging at several hundred metres per second onto her hand.

The purring cut off.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-

Jenny would have been lying if she'd said she hadn't enjoyed the film. Between chases through asteroid belts, against starfighters and a Imperial Star Destroyer, political mind games and betrayal on Bespin, and the climactic duel and reveal, it had been a film that had left her gripped. The growing relationship between Leia and Han, going from throwing insults at each other to a sudden, aggressive and heartfelt embrace in moments, seemed to her to be how many couples co-existed, although there would have been considerable debate about exactly who actually ran the household she shared with Vastra.

The siliurian was a dominant personality, and was very much in charge when it came to things like detective work and investigations. She also ruled most of the house with a velvet fist. One of her favourite joking threats, that Jenny never took seriously, was to prepare her as the hors d'oeuvres next time she caught a criminal, usually after Jenny had blocked one of her big ideas. Since these usually required technology still to be invented, several engineers with specialized equipment and the full cooperation of the authorities, Jenny would pick holes in then until Vastra conceded the point. Another threat she made, which Jenny took a tiny bit more seriously, was to attach her to a beam in the attic by her ankles and leave her there. Carrying it out, however, had several issues, mostly involving the fact that they were trading unarmed sparring matches fairly evenly, and that Jenny had access to a fire poker at all times, carrying it around so that Vastra was prevented from playing with it and damaging everything in the room in the process.

Still, their disputes were almost entirely good natured, often revolving around an incident they only remembered as "...that time...", and otherwise little more than a joking prelude to other things. That said, Vastra knew that entering the kitchen while Jenny was cooking was grounds to be smacked with a ladle, or once, for trying to add a large number of sliced chillies to what was supposed to be a beef stew, beaten around the head with a nine-inch diameter frying pan, while being chased out of the room and threatened with a large bucket of ice.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-

After filing out of the theatre, after the film was over, Clara glanced at the Doctor, who looked almost contemplative, until he noticed her looking, at which point his expression changed to one of boredom.

"Is that what humans call a classic film?" He growled. "I could have done better with my laptop when I was thirteen."

"I'm sure you could." Clara replied, giving him an arch look. "Considering that we only invented the microchip about fifteen years before this film was made, and that most of the animation was done by hand, I think you can allow them some slack."

He simply glared, using his eyebrows to full effect, before leading the way to a nearby diner.

"I thought Jenny could use a bite to eat." He explained, before pushing open the stainless steel clad doors.

Inside, primary coloured seating clashed with black and white floors, slightly tacky from soft drink spillages and a lack of cleaning. Behind the counter, a bored looking woman was chewing gum.

"What can ah git fore yoa?" She asked.

"I'll have a large coffee, Jenny will have a large steak and chips, Clara will have a hot chocolate, and my veiled friend will have a steak ultra-rare."

"Da yous want somethin' to eat wi' that?"

"No." The Doctor said, deploying his eyebrows.

The Doctor handed over a twenty dollar bill, before leading the small party to a corner booth.

The food arrived within five minutes, a mound of chips and onion rings accompanying the dish quickly split between the other diners, before Jenny dug in with a will to the mound of carbohydrates, fats and a small amount of actual protein.

**Author's note: This is now officially my longest ever fic, weighing in at close to twenty-seven thousand words and therefore longer than many science fiction novels published before Dune changed the face of the genre. It is also by no means over. I would like to thank allmydesiredpennamesaretaken, Son of Whitebeard, TheBigCat, Ceridwyn2 and an unnamed guest for their reviews to the previous chapter.**

**In an unrelated note, I would like to congratulate Malala Yousafzai for becoming the world's youngest ever Nobel laureate, aged just seventeen, an age when most of us are concerned with matters such as exams and clothing, and wish her all of the best for whatever the future holds.**


	18. I3P4: Returning from the movies

Clara was slightly surprised that Jenny and Vastra waited until they were back aboard the TARDIS before finally having the row that had been brewing since Vastra had swiped most of Jenny's onion rings.

"Now, look here, you bleeding daft reptile," Jenny yelled. "When I say share, I mean split roughly fifty-fifty, not you take a massive handful and leave me with a few of the little ones!"

"And I thought you meant take as many as you want!" Vastra replied at a similar volume, waving what appeared to be a magically produced tanto.

"Put it away." The Doctor broke in, firmly pushing Vastra's arm down. With a sniff, the Silurian returned it to its sheath, before employing her traditional means of resolving an argument, and lassoing her wife around the neck with her tongue, before pulling her in for a kiss.

"Silurian saliva contains trace levels of the toxin they produce orally. At lower levels, it acts as a combination of an endorphin and aphrodisiac." The Doctor told Clara quietly. "It doesn't have any permanent effects, and is easily resisted by most humans. Jenny has to let it affect her way of thinking for it to do so."

"She must really trust her." Clara murmured.

"They're in love." The Doctor replied. "They come from an era when love meant that both sides utterly trusted each other. As it happens, some of the compounds in tea act as both a stimulant and a slight muscle relaxant when interacting with the Silurian brain. There is also a compound that makes them more suggestible after drinking tea, but it shouldn't have too much of an effect on someone as strong minded as Vastra. Chocolate has a slightly different effect; it makes them very drowsy, and extremely suggestible. Jenny uses it as a way to get her to go to sleep."

"I see." Clara responded, with a grin. "What does oregano do to silurians?"

"You put oregano on her food?" He asked, seeming rather confused. "Are you and Danny still getting on?"

"Wha...?" She spluttered.

"No wonder she's acting like a teenager." He muttered. "Clara, Silurian bio-physiology means that some if the trace compounds in oregano affect the Silurian amygdala, effectively causing them to regress in age terms. How much did she have?"

"The amount required to season a three pound steak."

"No wonder." He muttered to himself. "Give her a large dose of hot chocolate when you get her through the doors. And be prepared for her to be rather playful before it kicks in."

-0-0-0-0-0-0-

A few minutes later, Jenny managed to untangle herself from Vastra, and made her way over to Clara and the Doctor.

"I'm assuming that our first stop is my cell." She said, looking slightly uncomfortable at the idea.

"Well, we could take you home, but I suspect that they'd be knocking on the door in no time at all, and you'd probably end up with Vastra sharing your cell." The Doctor told her. "Before we land, though, you need to get that cough seen to."

"What cough?" Jenny asked, wondering how the Doctor had noticed it.

"The one you've been stifling all evening. Is your cell damp and cold?"

"Yes." Jenny replied, dreading the answer.

"It's probably just prison cough, but I guess it could be consumption. Clara will take you down to the medical room. I've got the equipment down there to investigate."

Hearing her name spoken, Clara turned to the Victorian girl.

"If you want to follow me," She said, smiling, before leading the way through a maze of corridors. "She didn't like me at first." She commented, patting the nearest wall. "But we worked out our differences in the end, and she'll even let me fly her, even without the Doctor. I remember how I'd go down a corridor, spend ten minutes walking, and then come back out into the control room through the same door I went in through. She doesn't do that anymore, at least." She almost grinned as she said it, before leading the way through a small door.

Without even being asked, Jenny began to strip off her shirt.

"If you wouldn't..." Clara began, turning around with a what looked like a small box with buttons on it, just in time to get a very good look at Jenny's breasts.

She turned very crimson, before looking sharply away.

"I was going to suggest keeping your shirt on." She said, sharply.

"I don't mind in the slightest." Jenny said.

"Look, Jenny, it isn't that you aren't an attractive person to look at, but I don't really find other women attractive. I'm sorry."

Jenny grinned slightly, clambering back into her shirt.

"I know." She said, grinning impishly. "But I wanted to make sure that Vastra was going be in safe hands. I love her, but I know her eye wanders sometimes." She said, before continuing more sombrely. "I doubt she'd ever stray physically, but I know that in the wrong circumstances, she might seek comfort from anyone who'd offer it to her."

"What do you want me to do?" Clara asked, suddenly feeling as if her stomach was full of butterflies.

"If she needs a hot water bottle in the night, go to her. Make sure to give her some hot chocolate first, and she'll just snuggle like a somewhat cold lizard. If she really needs something more than your body heat... I can't ask that of you. Contact a club on Paddington eight two two, and ask them for a specialist in life sciences. They'll send someone who won't mind and probably enjoy it out to take care of matters."

"Is that legal? Clara asked.

"If it was two men, no; because Vastra is female, it is not illegal."

"That isn't the same as legal."

"It's a grey area." Jenny said.

"Ok, he lent you a television, didn't he?"

"I rather enjoy your era of television." Jenny replied, grinning. "I don't watch the soaps, but there are some really fun dramas being made. I enjoyed one called 'by any means'."

"It's more or less what you and Vastra do, sometimes, isn't it?" Clara asked.

"Sometimes, yes," Jenny said, looking slightly sombre. "Sometimes she jokes about eating me. I know she'd never, but..."

"But there's a look in her eyes that worries you."

"Yes."

"I get that too, sometimes, with him." Clara told Jenny gesturing towards the control room. "Sometimes I think he just doesn't care about someone dying, even me. But then he says 'if I cared about that person, I might not be able to save the next', and I realise just how much he cares, that he doesn't allow himself to care."

Jenny simply sat there for a moment.

"We've only got a few minutes left before landing." Clara said, approaching with the medical scanner, before running it over the Victorian girl's chest at a range of about three feet. It bleeped and tweedled like an astromech droid for a few seconds, before something came up on the screen

"Ok. Scanner says you have a chest infection, and possibly the earliest stages of tuberculosis." Carla said, noting the flinch on the part of the Victorian girl at the idea that she had one of history's most fatal diseases. "I'm going to give you a jab which will clear up the cough, and counter any other diseases." She continued, moving over to a terminal. She removed a small chip from the body of the scanner, before inserting it into a small port on the surface of the terminal. The machine hummed for a few seconds, before fabricating a small, almost invisible hypodermic needle, along with an attached ampoule, filled with a colourless liquid.

Clara picked it up, holding it between her index finger and her middle finger, with her thumb resting on the plunger.

"Which arm would you prefer?" She asked Jenny, slightly surprised when she reacted by flinching away from the needle.

"That goes in an arm?" She asked, suddenly looking as nervous as a teenager faced with explaining the missing wing mirror on their parent's car.

"Yes." Clara explained. "It's a very efficient way of providing treatment such as vaccination, and of rapidly transferring medication directly into the bloodstream."

"Will it hurt?" Jenny asked, surprising Clara, until she realised that the girl in all likelihood hadn't had a vaccination in her lifetime.

"No. This needle is barely twice the diameter of a human hair, and should miss any nerve endings." Clara reassured her, approaching slowly, as Jenny turned to present her left shoulder for the injection.

Despite the newness of the needle, Clara swabbed the area where she was about to apply it with an alcohol gel, before pushing the needle into the meat of the other girl's arm. Jenny stiffened slightly as the needle penetrated her skin, before flinching away as the cold liquid flowed into the subcutaneous tissue surrounding her bicep.

Clara gently massaged the injection site with her thumb for several seconds, before stepping away and dumping the needle straight into a small disintegrator unit mounted on the wall. The unit purred like a motorbike for a moment, before falling silent.

"We need to get you dressed again." Clara said, as Jenny stood there, slightly massaging the injection site, before Clara ran a small device over it, causing the skin to rapidly seal over. Jenny scratched at the site where the wound had been, which was itching slightly, before Clara put her own hand over the site.

"It'll stop in a moment." Clara said, before keeping her hand there until it did.

Once the itching had stopped, Clara led Jenny back through to the wardrobe.

Once they were inside the room, she went over to the console, before entering a set of instructions. A few moments later, the machine paid out her prison clothes and the set of manacles her ankles had been secured together with.

She passed the garments to Jenny, pointedly moving to stand behind the screen until the Victorian girl gave the all clear.

Once jenny was dressed, the next part of the operation became required. They had to re-apply her manacles; otherwise it would seem strange that she'd managed to make them vanish from a locked cell with no egress large enough for three pounds of iron chains.

Before they locked them on, though, Jenny tore two wide strips of cloth off of the base of her dress, before carefully wrapping them around her ankles to form a layer of padding. She tied them off with a simple knot, before allowing Clara to fasten the heavy rings of pitted iron around her ankles, grinning as she did so.

"What?" Clara demanded, when she looked up and saw the look of amusement on the other girl's face.

"I haven't been tied up by another girl in a while." Jenny said, grinning mischievously.

"You…?" Clara spluttered, flushing red briefly.

"Never mind." Jenny said, just before the TARDIS spluttered as it came in to land.

**Author's note: I've had to split this chapter in two for easy readability, as it feels wrong for me to be submitting what would probably turn into a four thousand word chapter for some reason. I'd like to thank TheBigCat, TheTightTux and an unnamed guest for their reviews. I'd also suggest that said guest registers an account, or starts using a name, as this will allow me to refer to them more personally.**


	19. I3P5: Paternoster, and the morning after

Inside the control room, Jenny wrapped her arms around Vastra, who responded with a huge amount of enthusiasm, pulling the smaller biped close and kissing her frantically, even refusing to let go of her initially. It took Clara and Jenny several minutes to persuade the Silurian to release her hold and allow Jenny back into her cell.

Inside, the room was just as it had been before she left, with the smells of human feceal matter and rotten straw almost overpowering her for a moment, before she simply dropped onto the simple plank and curled up under the blanket, knowing that the next day would be just as brutal as the day she'd just survived.

-0-0-0-0-

Vastra keened slightly in her throat as the TARDIS lifted off without Jenny, a sound that seemed to Clara almost like a memorial dirge.

When it landed again, though, she seemed to be in a different mood, jostling Clara slightly, seemingly trying to size her up for something.

"Behave." The Doctor told her, after a moment.

Reluctantly, the Silurian backed off, looking more than slightly miffed at the intervention, as Clara opened the doors, allowing them to step out into the coachyard.

Clara went straight to the kitchen, making several dire threats about what would happen to Vastra if she entered the room, mostly involving being beaten around the head with a thick-bottomed skillet pan then fed into the sausage machine. There was a speculative look, before Vastra reluctantly headed for the drawing room.

Once she was in the kitchen, Clara fished out a bottle of milk from a cold place, having spent several minutes searching for it earlier when she was making the tea. She upended it into a saucepan, before turning on the heat underneath. Once the milk was heating up, she headed for the pantry.

Inside, she opened Jenny's cupboard, quickly searching out the oblong tin that contained the chocolate powder, labelled 'cocoa essence'. She removed the tall yellow tin from the shelf, before taking it out to the kitchen, and reading the packaging. It didn't give too many hints, beyond four teaspoons per half pint being the recommended level of powder.

Then, Clara noticed a small piece of paper that seemed to have been gummed to one side of the packet. When she read it, the handwriting was simple and printed, and read: 'one teaspoon: drowsy. Two teaspoons: very drowsy. Three teaspoons: extremely drowsy. Four teaspoons: asleep within moments of finishing. Five teaspoons: asleep before finishing. Six teaspoons: asleep for two days.' She grinned slightly. Jenny had obviously wanted a quiet night occasionally.

She stirred four teaspoons into the milk, before leaving it to brew for a minute.

While it was brewing, she made herself a packet of sandwiches, which she tucked into her satchel, expecting the next day to be somewhat busy.

Once the chocolate had brewed, she loaded it onto a tray, along with a small pile of what appeared to be fingers of powdered bone meal dipped in honey.

She also recovered a small frying pan, just in case.

In the drawing room, Vastra was huddled close to the fire, which appeared to have been lit using most of a newspaper and several random logs thrown in haphazardly without seemingly worrying about cross-section or length.

"What the hell are you playing at?" Clara yelled hurrying over.

"I'm trying to get warm." Vastra replied, her voice low and trying to sound as plaintive as it was possible for her to sound.

"You'll set the place on fire." Clara said, before bending down and using the poker, safely stashed on her person, to rearrange the fire so that it wouldn't escape, before replacing the fire guard to ensure it stayed where it had been put, noting as she did so the weight of the copper and the surprisingly ornate patterns that adorned both the edges of the grill and the mesh itself.

While she was doing so, Vastra had been sitting there, and Clara turned around just in time to catch a look on her face that suggested she'd been thinking about things Clara would rather she hadn't.

"Bed." Clara ordered her, before menacingly raising the frying pan.

The Silurian looked at her for a moment, seemingly thinking 'my tongue can have that thing off of her in a heartbeat.' Clara twitched the pan slightly, though, and Vastra seemed to surrender, before allowing herself to be marched upstairs.

Once she had got the Silurian into her bedroom, Clara very pointedly stood behind a screen while she changed into her nightdress. For reasons best known to herself, Vastra had chosen a knee-length skirt made from cream silk, which wasn't necessarily the colour Clara would have in any way suggested for her.

"Jenny has threatened to bin this dress more times than I can count." Vastra said, seeming to pick up on something in her body language. "She says it clashes horribly with my skin."

"It does." Clara said.

"Would you like to take it off of me?" Vastra asked, wriggling her hips slightly.

"No!" Clara replied, backing away slightly. "Drink your cocoa." She said, after a moment, proffering the drink as if it was a holy symbol.

The Silurian sniffed the air for a moment, before her tongue flicked out and ensnared the drinking vessel, looping itself several times around the body of the earthenware vessel, then returning it to her hand. She sat on the corner of the bed, before blowing on the drink.

"Clara...?" Vastra asked. "I really need a hot water bottle tonight."

"And you're mentioning this because?"

"I'm mentioning it because you are an endotherm."

"And that means?"

"It means that you produce body heat." Vastra replied.

"Don't even consider it." Clara said, waving a finger. "I don't go in for that sort of thing."

"I wasn't going to suggest it." Vastra replied, trying to sound earnest and believable.

"Sure you weren't." Clara muttered. "Sit down and drink up." She said, raising her frying pan again.

The Silurian made it look like she was consuming the drink entirely under duress, although the slight purring noises coming from her suggested otherwise. It took her about a minute to finish the drink, before she put the mug down, and curled up under the covers, out like a light.

Despite her reservations, Clara changed into her own nightdress, a heavy garment made of undyed wool. Reluctantly, she clambered onto the opposite side of the bed, and almost as soon as she was under the covers, the Silurian was snuggled against her, resting her chin on the top of Clara's head.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-

When Vastra woke up, she was far warmer than she had been in days. There appeared to be an ape of some variety curled up next to her. She took a tentative sniff, hoping it would turn out to be Jenny, and that the last few days had been a horrible nightmare.

Instead, she recognised the scent as that of the Doctor's morality pet, Clara. She spent a moment wandering what the girl was doing curled up in her bed, and why they were both fully clothed if they were in the same bed, before connecting the fact that she was warm with the fact Clara was producing body heat, and sharing it with her.

She considered trying her luck with the girl, before deciding, that, on balance, she would probably have a frying pan wrapped around her head if she tried, and it would be no fun if she was asleep.

Nevertheless, she briefly tapped her on the back of the neck with her tongue, transferring a careful amount of venom that would leave the victim asleep for about ten minutes.

Then she reached under the bed, fetching out a large piece of leather, and grinned as she bent over Clara.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

Clara woke up with a splitting headache.

It reminded her of the time at teaching college someone had slipped something into her drink, although thankfully her boyfriend at the time had been on hand to rescue her from being presumably sexually assaulted, or worse.

Groaning to herself, she tried to rub her forehead, only to find that she couldn't move her arms, which were behind her back, before realising her shoulders were hurting. There was also a pressure across her upper chest and against her throat.

"VASTRA! GET UP HERE, NOW!"

**Author's note: for those not familiar with bondage equipment, Clara has been placed in a device called an armbinder. Obviously, I cannot research the origins of this item, owing to the period taboo on discussing such matters, so I have no idea if such devices were available in that era, although a device known as the 'massager' aka the vibrator, was developed in 1880 with chemical batteries, and **_**very **_**popular until certain groups figured out what they actually were and put a stop to them. I would also like to thank Insane Jellyfish, THeBigCat and wHOUFFLE for their reviews to the previous chapter.**


	20. An very unpleasant guest, and cards

**Author's note: this chapter will be dealing with serious issues, which I do not wish to misrepresent in any way as being anything other than heinous and despicable.**

Waking up as stiff as a board seemed to be something Jenny was going to have to get used to, she realised, as she groaned her way off of the hard wooden board that served her as a bunk, feeling the cold morning air as she unfolded herself from under the threadbare blanket that was her only source of warmth or comfort in the room.

Reluctantly, she hurried over to the bucket that was her sole source of sanitation, before eventually relieving herself into it, muttering several four lettered words of Anglo-Saxon origin at having to use a open bucket.

Once she'd finished answering the call of nature, she moved back into the middle of her cell, before beginning some stretching exercises. They weren't anything complicated, just some simple yoga exercises that she could do despite having her ankles shackled together. She kept on repeating them for about twenty minutes, glad of the scraps of fabric she'd fastened around her ankles to cushion her restraints.

Then there was a bang on her door, before the hatch slid open, to reveal a warder she didn't recognise, accompanied by someone she did. Even though she knew he wasn't a threat to her, her breath still caught in her throat as she recognised the prison chaplain.

Then, she realised something far worse.

She'd left the case that disguised her gameboy exposed, rather than tucked underneath the covers or inside her clothing.

His face twisted into what could only be termed a smile, although it put her in mind of a crocodile yawning just before slipping underneath the surface of a muddy river, next to a ford.

"Would you like some words of comfort, child?" He asked.

Jenny hesitated. Despite everything she'd seen, and despite being married to a lizard woman from the dawn of time, she still had a core of belief inside her heart. It drove Vastra mad at times, the sight of her little ape occasionally glancing at what to the silurian's eyes was an entirely meaningless, although extremely popular, item of jewellery, as they passed down a street full of jewellers. She also couldn't understand why Jenny insisted that they both went and sat in a cold stone building for an hour or more, listening to someone reading from a book, on a particular day of the week.

"I would, father." She replied, keeping her eyes low, hoping to get through whatever was going to happen next without an issue occurring.

The warder unlocked the door, before the chaplain turned to him, with a gentle smile.

"Why don't you go and get a cup of tea?" He asked. "I'm sure I have nothing to fear from the prisoner here."

"If you're sure, sir, I will." The warder replied, before the chaplain nodded, and the chaplain entered the cell.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-

The small room used by the warders as a staff room was half full when Jerry Halright walked in, grinning.

"The old bastard has just decided to go into the same cell as Jenny Flint." He told one of the other warders, when the man raised an eyebrow.

At the news, most of the warders started grinning as well. It was a grin usually associated with sharks, although in this case, there was also a certain amount of genuine amusement.

"Do you reckon we should go and help?" One of the others asked.

"Mike, is she going to need any help?" Halright replied.

"I want to watch, anyway." Thomas replied. "This is going to be even better than giving that piece of godforsaken shit Sykes a kicking was."

There was a general movement of warders towards the exit at that point, most of them still holding their cups of tea.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

Jenny sat nervously on her bunk, trying to project a sense of calm and strength into the room, as the chaplain stood a few feet away from her, with a smile on his face that she really hoped she was misinterpreting.

"This is the way it is going to go." He said. "You take your skirt up around your waist, and I untie anything you're wearing underneath it. Then I have some fun, and hopefully you do as well."

"And if I tell you to get lost?" She replied.

"Then I still have fun."

He made a mistake, though, at that point. He moved in, mistaking the dropping of her shoulders for resignation.

She quickly ran through her options. _He's not that big. About five nine, I reckon one hundred and ninety pounds. My ankles are chained, so this isn't going to be a footwork job._

The instant he touched her shoulder, she acted, driving an elbow into his gut, before grabbing his extended arm in a single move. She twisted to face him, using his arm as a pivot, before using all of her strength to pull the man's arm straight, then driving the base of her hand against the wrong side of the elbow joint, causing it to bend entirely the wrong way with a sickening series of sounds and tendons and cartilage ruptured and broke, sending a wave of agony shooting up the man's arm.

If her ankles had been free, her first blow would have been lethal. She'd have taken a step away from him, before driving the full force of her anger and fear into muscular action, powering a kick that would have connected just below the man's ribcage, all of the force focused through the smallest possible area, and hopefully into her attackers heart. The hydrostatic shock would have caused an almost instantaneous heart attack, and quite possibly ruptured several chambers in the heart. Vastra had shown her the technique using a training dummy, before making it very clear that silurian martial artists only used the move when they intended to kill someone. It had taken her about a week to perfect.

When the pain arrived at the man's brain, he bellowed in pain, before Jenny darted backwards, avoiding the clumsy punch she'd known was coming before he threw it. A rattle momentarily distracted her, and she turned, seeing the face of Warder Thomas grinning broadly at her through the hatch, before he slid it shut again. She grinned as well, darting up onto the balls of her feet, before catching the next clumsy blow the man threw at her. He paled when he felt the strength of her grip, before she twisted his arm out, and broke it in the same way she had the other.

Then she grabbed him by the back of his robes, and hurled him against the cell door, before following up with a single blow with her knee, which rose viciously between the man's legs, almost pulping his testicles with a single hit.

The groan of pain caused the door to open, and she saw what looked like most of the shift of warders standing outside, several of them exchanging coins, and all grinning broad grins at the sight of the chaplain on the floor in agony.

"We all saw it, didn't we?" Thomas said. "He was coming out of Jenny's cell when he tripped and fell, landing very awkwardly and breaking both of his arms, before catching the closing door between his legs."

There was a chorus on the theme of "indeed".

"Sorry about that, Miss Jenny." Thomas said. "We knew what he was like, but he had too much power for us to stop him."

"I know." She replied. "I didn't want to touch him, but he tried to... tried to..." She broke off, her shoulders falling as the anger leaked out and was replaced by fear.

"I know." Thomas replied, as several of the other wardens scooped up the semi-conscious clergyman. "He does that to all of the girls he likes the look of. And we're right pleased someone managed to stop him doing it for once."

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

Clara still hadn't managed in any way to get even slightly free. Both arms and both shoulders were hurting like they were on fire, and it didn't matter what she tried, there was no way out. She had run out of Anglo-Saxon words some time earlier, and resigned herself to waiting until Vastra returned.

_Meanwhile, in the pig and hound..._

Vastra played her hand with a certain amount of amusement, having successfully strung along several of the male humans from a combination of facial expressions and their smell. Reaching out, she scooped up her winnings for the hand, a mound of coins totalling around three shillings, before taking a sip of her wine, and dealing the next hand.

**Twenty chapters, and more than thirty thousand words. And this fic keeps on going. Considering that Jenny's prison sentence has another four days to run, I have no idea how much longer this story is going to get. I'd like to thank TheTightTux for both his review and some additional information he provided, and Insane Jellyfish for reviewing.**


	21. Clara and Vastra discuss matters

When she heard the front door open, Clara began wriggling as much as she could, trying to struggle into a more dignified position than flat on her stomach with her arms completely immobilized behind her back. She was astonished at how effective the restraint was, however, although she finally managed to squirm into a sitting position with her legs dangling off the edge of the bed before Vastra opened the door.

"Oi!" She yelled, as soon as the door opened. "What the hell is this about?"

"I thought it would be a joke." Vastra replied, looking ever so slightly sheepish.

"Ah..." Clara gasped, as an attempt to move her arms slightly to one side nearly dislocated one of her shoulders. "Can you get this thing off of me?" She almost begged.

"Jenny always says it's really comfortable." Vastra said, bending down and carefully unbuckling the two straps holding the armbinder in place.

"Jenny is a lot more flexible than I am." Clara groaned, as the leather sleeve was finally slid down her arms, allowing her to separate her elbows for the first time in fourteen hours.

"I didn't realise that flexibility varied among humans."

"You..." Clara gasped, slowly trying to work some actual feeling back into any part of her arm below the elbow.

"Clara, I meant it as a harmless prank." Vastra said, looking extremely earnest, and her face turning a somewhat darker shade of green. "I didn't mean for you to suffer anything more than a period of limited mobility."

Clara just looked at her.

The silurian stared back.

"Right, shall we have tea?" Clara said, after a few uncomfortable moments.

"Tea sounds an excellent idea." Vastra replied, breaking into a smile that would have looked very happy, had it not exposed a set of teeth that would have given pause to most carnosaurs. Clara just shook her head.

Quickly, she headed for the stairs, ensuring that Vastra left the room ahead of her to avoid any additional pranks that would leave her dangling over the hall from the first floor ceiling, or simply leave her secured to a section of stair rail by one hand. As it turned out, her precautions were entirely unnecessary, and she reached the hall without incident.

When she opened the kitchen door, the first thing Clara smelt was smoke.

"You've been trying to make tea for yourself, haven't you?" She said, turning to a somewhat embarrassed silurian.

"I didn't realise how difficult it is." Vastra replied.

Shaking her head, Clara bent down to the firebox on the wood burning stove, before cautiously opening it, making sure both she and Vastra were standing out of line with the door.

As it turned out, the fire was merrily burning, and didn't send a fireball through the hatch.

Clara looked inside, and burst out laughing.

"Can you... get me... a set of... tongs?" She managed to splutter out between fits of laughter.

The silurian gave her an arch look, before fetching a set of tongs Jenny normally used to extract the Vastra equivalent of a shank from the oven. Grinning, she reached in, before locking the teapot between the two grabs and rapidly extracting it, noticing the way the paint was busy being on fire as she did so.

"Why did you put the teapot in the firebox?" She asked, trying to keep her continued amusement off of her face.

"I thought that was where it went." Vastra replied, sulkily.

"It doesn't get heated. The water goes in the kettle first." Clara replied, before emptying the water out of the baked teapot.

"Where do the rest of the teapots live?" She asked, before Vastra nodded at one of the cupboards. Inside, she found a selection of teapots, several showing signs of Vastra having been involved in their withdrawal from service. After a few moments, she quickly removed an intact silver teapot, decorated with ferns and scrolls, before filling a kettle with about two pints of water, then placing it on the stove to heat up.

While the water was heating up, she extracted a pair of tea bags from the tea caddy, then placed the pair of the smooth bags into the pot, before pouring the boiling water in on top of them, trying to avoid gasps of pain from the various muscle groups which were still complaining about having spent the previous fourteen hours trapped in an incredibly painful position by an armbinder. Just lifting the kettle, which, in total, weighed a kilogram, was enough to leave her in discomfort, and holding it while she poured the contents into the teapot was almost torture.

As soon as she'd managed to pour the water out of the kettle and into the teapot, she quickly placed the empty kettle on an unheated section of stove-top, before stepping away, and just collapsing into the surprisingly present arms of the silurian detective.

"Clara?" She said, as a wave of black ink receded from in front of the human's eyes.

"Mmm?" Clara groaned.

"I'm sorry." Vastra said, simply, without any of the mischief with which she'd expressed the same sentiment previously. "This is my fault. If I was male, I'd say I was thinking with my dick."

"We all do that occasionally." Clara replied, before groaning as the pain from overstressed joints and muscle groups hit her again. Then she looked down, before whipping her head back up. "Did you have to open the front of my nightdress?" she demanded, glaring angrily at the silurian.

"It says in the book to loosen all clothing…" Vastra said, a hopeful tone not quite creeping into her voice.

"To loosen all tight clothing." Clara corrected her, before angrily continuing. "It does not say that bored, highly intelligent, homosexual lizards should use a faint as an excuse to take a look at the breasts of someone they know full well would never consent to such while conscious."

Vastra pulled back from the human girl with a sharp hiss.

"And don't you dare give me some spiel about it being part of your damned cultural heritage or some such." Clara continued. "I know as well as you that while you probably didn't plan for me to faint, you know better than to dare to take advantage of such an episode simply to satisfy your sexual curiosity about someone. That is common manners, in any developed culture."

There was a blur of movement, and Vastra was suddenly in possession of a meat cleaver.

"Put it down." Clara said, sounding almost tired. "If you used that, you'd be a handbag and matching shoes inside of a day, and you know that as well as I do."

The cleaver went hurtling across the room, before lodging in the door.

"Are you sure you don't want to go back to bed?" Vastra asked, her voice suddenly turning almost sultry.

"Get out of here." Clara ordered her, staggering back to her feet, before wobbling over to the hook by the kitchen door where she'd left her satchel, which included her phone, thoughtfully modified to work in almost any time period by the Doctor. Of course, it still wouldn't work in rural areas in her own time period, or when on the tube on her way to a night out.

Angrily, she punched in the code that would connect her to the TARDIS.

"Yes?" The Doctor asked after a moment.

"Can you give me any tips for dealing with Vastra?" Clara asked. "She's getting totally out of control."

"Hang on…" The Doctor replied, before several gunshots sounded, then he came back on the line. "I'm in the middle of something."

"Right." Clara said. "Is that something called a firefight?"

"Yes."

"I need some tips on handling Vastra without using a rolling pin."

"Can they wait?"

"She just took advantage of me ending up passed out to have a look at my breasts." Clara replied. "So no, I need some advice before I go near her again."

"You need to show her some strength. She'll respect that, and the fact that she seems attracted to you should be less of an issue. There is also the Cadbury option."

"Doctor, I'm not going to keep drugging her." Clara replied. "That's underhanded and cruel, not to mention unreasonable."

"She took your shirt off without your permission." The Doctor replied, as several more gunshots and volleys of fire echoed around the area.

"I need to be able to live with her without drugging her." Clara replied, frustrated.

"I don't know. Use your head or something." He replied.

"What does cinnamon do to silurians?" She asked, noticing that the jar containing it seemed to be almost the size of a small oil-drum in comparison to most of the other spices.

"It reduces libido considerably." He replied.

"Then it doesn't count as drugging." Clara replied, firmly, before putting the phone down.

She carefully searched through several recipe books, aware that there weren't many dishes which combined cinnamon and meat for any reason. However, those that did seemed to have been marked, along with annotations which looked suspiciously like dosages.

Grinning, she began reading the recipe for lamb tagine.

**This chapter has taken a few days to produce, largely because of my habit of writing it on my kindle, then concatenating the document on the PC for upload. I'd like to thank Insane Jellyfish, Son of Whitebeard and Ceridwyn2. Ceridwyn, the warders are taking pleasure from the poetic comeuppance of someone who they can't stop, as it would be their word against his, and he is more powerful. The taking of bets is simply standard when two people in such a situation are having a fight. They were betting on what was being broken, mainly.**

**I'd also like to express my condolences for all those involved in, as well as my shock and horror at, the events unfolding today in Ottawa, particularly as it appears that a member of the Canadian armed forces has lost their life during this incident, along with the incident on Tuesday, when another soldier was killed and a second injured in a apparently terrorism related hit and run.**


	22. Tagine, and beef jerky

Vastra crawled into the small cavity next to the chimney she'd converted into a nest. It contained everything essential for her: one of Jenny's best bolsters, a warm hollow she could curl up in, and a small stone box she'd made from marble slabs, which contained a stash of beef jerky, along with several 'just add water' cups of tea. It was where she went to think, and occasionally sulk.

This was one of those occasions.

Somehow, she'd upset Clara. She should have known better, but there had been something about her that made Vastra want to take a look, and possibly another. Jenny had accepted the way Vastra acted, and even joined in on occasion, although she'd always refused to prepare or sample Vastra's dishes of criminal. Why didn't Clara do the same? It just wasn't logical.

One of the features silurians lacked, due to evolutionary differences, compared to humans, was the tear duct. Humans seemed to express certain emotions through the production of water from the corners of their eye. Strangely, these weren't even consistent emotions. Sometimes, crying meant "I'm in severe pain." Other times, it mean "I've been laughing for ages." And then it could mean "My four legged companion animal is dead." Or it could mean "My son's just come back alive and well from the Boer war." Silurians just had a scent for each emotion, and they never used the same scent for different things. Humans seemed to be the opposite.

Grumpily, Vastra pulled the top off of her cool compartment, before reaching inside and fishing out a strip of jerky. To her, it was almost like toffee was for humans. Really tasty, a bit chewy, and it always got stuck in her teeth. It took ages, even with a prehensile tongue, to worm out all of the scraps of meat that seemed to insist on working themselves into the most awkward gaps and cavities, and never doing so with her knowledge. It gave her time to think, though.

She knew, on some level, that she was unusual in some ways. Silurian society didn't see anything wrong with females who liked other females. It kept the balance, in the same way that males who liked other males did. There were always enough to go around, whoever wanted what. It might have been a source of discomfort on occasion, but there was nothing actually wrong with it. Humans, meanwhile, seemed to view it differently. They seemed to think that five percent of their entire population were somehow different, or less human, simply because they liked people the same gender as them. It was wrong. She knew that by Clara's time, it would be different, at least officially, although those who didn't share that view would still be out there.

Without thinking, she grabbed a second piece of jerky, and chewed one end of it. It tasted slightly different, but only in a way that added flavour, seeming to have been soaked for longer than the previous stick. The room was full of the scent of another emotion humans expressed with tears; "I've been jilted." There was also an element of "I am lonely."

Resignedly, she curled up in the warm hollow, positioned directly above the corner of the main chimney stack where it joined with the drawing room and the kitchen flues. There was an element of "I'm sad and alone" in the air as she snared another piece of jerky with her tongue.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

Clara was unsurprised to find a large sack of chickpeas in the vegetable larder, along with a sack of what were definitely dried apricots, one of the main ingredients of tagine. She also found a tin of dates, which she took back into the kitchen along with the rest of the vegetable ingredients, as the recipe called for them as an addition. She'd already put the mutton in the sauce, along with most of the herbs and seasonings, and it was now a matter of carefully adding the rest of the ingredients, before putting the top on the special dish, and leaving it to cook for around five hours. She couldn't help adding just a touch of chocolate, although she doubted that even Vastra would notice the amount she added.

Then she fulfilled another of her rules. She extracted her phone from the pocket she'd placed it in when she started cooking, and dialled the second number on the list.

"Hello, you." Danny said, after a moment. "Off with him again?"

"I'm actually dropped off at the moment." She replied. "I've been having an interesting day, though. Woke up locked in some sort of leather arm trap, and I was only let out because my host can't make tea without setting fire to the teapot. And then I came around from a faint to find a lizard woman from the dawn of time looking at my breasts."

"She must have good taste, then." Danny said, jokingly. "I can think of few things I'd rather look at."

"It isn't funny." Clara hissed. "I swear she's got a crush on me."

"And when are you?" He asked. Normally, you'd ask where, but he knew enough about her travels to know that when was more informative.

"Victorian England." Clara replied. "I haven't found a newspaper yet, but I'm guessing eighteen-nineties."

"So she'd be in trouble if it came out?" Danny asked.

"She's married to her maid." Clara said. "The ceremony wasn't held in in this time period, obviously, but still married."

"Have you told the wife?" Danny asked.

"That's why I'm here. The wife is in prison for punching someone, and my host needs someone who can operate the kitchen."

"Just when is your host from?" Danny asked, knowing that the chances of a normal answer were almost non-existent.

"The end of the cretaceous." Clara said.

"The cretaceous?"

"Yep. Time of the dinosaurs, and as it turns out, lizard people."

"And one of them is living in Victorian London."

"In the house I'm standing in." Clara replied. "She works as a detective."

"So, you're in Victorian England, working with a lesbian lizard person who was born in the cretaceous and now works as a detective and has a crush on you."

"That about sums it up." Clara said. "She also really likes tea."

"Everybody likes tea." Danny said.

"True." Clara said, grinning. "I'll see you at lunchtime."

"How long are you there for?"

"Until the wife is released from prison." Clara said. "Another four days."

"Man with a blue box." Danny just said, after a pause for a few moments. "Useful to know."

"At times like this, I'm not so sure." Clara said.

"See you soon. Make sure to call me."

"I love you." Clara said, before hanging up.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

The smell of the tagine quickly infiltrated most of the building, and even found its way into the little compartment Vastra was curled up in, mostly asleep, and wrapped around a half-eaten stick of jerky in a fetal position. She wasn't sobbing physically, but the wall of scents that surrounded her were the silurian equivalent of shaking shoulders and muffled sobs hidden underneath the covers. Admittedly, she was also curled around one of Jenny's best bolsters, which she carefully substituted at regular intervals to maintain the scent of her wife.

_Tagine._ She thought, uncurling from the ball, and absently sticking the remaining piece of jerky behind one ear. _Jenny only does tagine once a month, and we had it last week. Which means that Clara is trying to make amends._ Grinning, she clambered out of the padded cavity, before clambering through the small tunnel that connected her little cave with the disused fireplace in her room, exiting into the dressing room that doubled as her subsidiary armoury, holding an assortment of body armour, varying from chainmail vests acquired in the fifteenth century to magnoceramic suits of thirty-seventh century body armour that weighed little more than clothes, but would stop nearly anything. They were a little obvious, though, having arrived in their factory white, and being too bulky to wear underneath clothing. Vastra kept them for the purpose of repelling anything that needed protection she couldn't conceal while moving, which meant largely cybermen and an all-out alien invasion. Her leather catsuit was made with several layers of material, using layers of ferrocermatic weave underneath the outer skin to allow it to stop bullets and most shot fired by even late nineteenth century weapons. There was also a rack with two pairs of bulletproof vests, one larger than the other. They had been made in the twenty-first century, and used layers of Kevlar and ceramic plates to stop bullets. They were also just about concealable under Victorian clothing.

Once she was out of the comforting tunnel, she briefly considered climbing back inside or into bed, before plucking up her courage, and accepting that she'd have to face Clara sooner or later.

When she got downstairs, Clara was sitting in the kitchen, with a cup of tea in her hands, and other to one side.

"Clara, I'm so sorry." Vastra blurted, looking the human in the eyes, a gesture which was trust building among humans, rather than the challenge to a fight it was perceived as among silurians. "I was being stupid, and I know it."

"We all make mistakes." Clara said, before Vastra darted past her towards one of the many cupboards, before producing a bowl, and performing an action that was possibly the closest Clara had ever seen to a humanoid version of a dog sitting next to its bowl.

"How soon will it be ready?" Vastra asked.

"About another four hours." Clara replied, grinning at the look of frustration on Vastra's face, before gesturing to the poured cup next to her. "That's ready now." She said, unsurprised at the swooping rush that almost emptied the cup in one long swallow.

A few moments later there was a strangled gasp, before Vastra darted outside and stuck her head under the pump.

**Author's note: I'd like to thank Ceridwyn2, Insane Jellyfish and TheTightTux for their reviews to the last chapter. Ceridywn, I'm based in England, which led to a certain amount of surprise that the Canadian parliament could be penetrated so easily. Westminster Palace has about three layers of armed security and spiked fences, originally thanks to the IRA, but that serve equally well in the modern era. I understand that Canadian culture is different, though, and I wish ours was as well.**

**I've also discovered a song from the Redwall series, titled If You Dare, which is a very interesting look at the mind-set of a particular grouping from the series and a really nice song to listen to.**


	23. A new blanket, and a serious discussion

One of the few benefits of the Sabbath seemed to be that even prisoners sentenced to hard labour got the day off. For Jenny, it was somewhat questionable, as benefits went, as it left her unable to take her mind off of the actions of the chaplain.

It wasn't the first time a man had tried to force himself upon her. If, by some miracle, he'd succeeded in doing so, that was something she'd managed to survive in the past. She had developed a method of just tuning out completely, and putting her mind somewhere beyond the ability of an attacker to target, and just focusing on Vastra, usually when she was infiltrating a prostitution ring as part of an inquiry into the disappearance of someone's daughter. Otherwise, it would be very strange if she needed to outside of an enquiry, given the training program the silurian had put her through. As the chaplain had found out to the extreme cost of his testicles, trying to force himself on someone who would have been considered an fifth-chakim martial artist by a silurian assessment panel was a very very Bad Idea.

Then there was a single knock on the door, before the panel slid aside.

"Miss Flint, May I enter?" A man's voice asked.

"If you want to." Jenny replied, suppressing her accent with more difficulty than usual. Vastra had very firmly insisted that the young ape, as she'd habitually refered to Jenny at that point, learnt something of basic manners and speaking without avoiding the use of half the alphabet. Jenny had tried to keep her accent as much as she could, but it had been a struggle she'd lost, although by the same measure, she'd never particularly be an RP speaker.

The man who pushed open the cell door was well dressed, wearing a simple suit, and carrying a bowler under one arm.

She sprang to her feet and saluted.

"Sir." She said, recognising the prison governor.

"Sit down, Miss Flint." He said, with what could almost be described as a paternal smile. "I'm sorry about what happened earlier today."

"You're the governor." Jenny replied. "Why was such a man employed as your chaplain, if you didn't want him?"

"Unfortunately, he comes from a family that is well connected at court. He caused them more than a few minor scandals, usually involving domestic staff of one type or another, although they were always hushed up at a certain amount of expense. Occasionally, the victim would vanish, although the Yard could never prove anything untoward had happened." The governor paused, before continuing. "He also is a freemason, which makes convicting him far harder, as most judges are members of the Masonic lodges of the city as well."

"So..."

"So someone finally managing to fight back, even if we can't say the real source of his injuries, is something of a cathartic moment for some of us. I'm trying to suggest that his injuries mean he wouldn't be able to continue his duties for some time to the board, and that we should look for a replacement at least in the meantime."

"Why are you here talking to me?" Jenny asked, suddenly very aware that there might be several people who might have reason to cause her serious harm.

"I've discovered evidence earlier today that suggests that you are deserving of increased comfort levels in your cell." He said. "You're well behaved, you haven't caused any issues for the warders, and you've served a third of your sentence." He grinned at her, before continuing. "Normally, someone serving a short sentence wouldn't have long enough for the paperwork to go through, but I received three different copies of the same form this morning, and under the circumstances, I am very happy to sign off on them."

Jenny's eyes grew wide at the idea of actually having things like padding to sleep on, or a clean blanket that didn't smell of dozens of other people and of mixed sweat and vomit belonging to most of them.

Then her eyes grew wider, as a pallet somewhat deeper than she'd imagined was carried in.

"It would seem that all we have in stores at the moment is a supply of six inch pallets, due to an unfortunate fire involving about a dozen of the standard pallets, which we have no idea of the cause of. We also appear to have a brand new blanket, which has been provided with the pallet. It isn't an army cast off, and was originally purchased after a number of the board discovered that we had no additional items for pregnant prisoners to improve their comfort."

Jenny just grinned as the pallet was placed on her small sleeping platform, along with, to her surprise, a small pillow stuffed with straw, and a stool, which was connected with a short chain to a ring set into the floor.

"It's all signed for." The governor said with a grin, before exiting the cell, leaving Jenny bouncing on her heels as she absorbed the change in her circumstances.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

_That underhanded, cruel and mean little ape._ Vastra thought, as she guzzled water directly out of the pump. _I play an entirely harmless prank on her, and she goes and puts Jenny's vindaloo powder in my tea. That is a act of sacrilegious impiety, to do something like that to an innocent cup of tea. To serve me that adulterated tea is like pouring oil down a rabbit warren and throwing in a match; cruel, pointless and hurtful._

"Oi!" Clara yelled, just before Vastra was hit by an entire bucket of water.

The siliurian turned, bristling.

"That was for looking at my breasts!" She yelled. "The curry powder was for leaving me in that thing for fourteen hours." Then she burst out laughing at the offended look on the silurian's face.

Vastra attempted to hold a glare on her that would have terrified most carnosaurs into retreat, but after a few moments, she realised that she couldn't help but join the laughter.

"This... does... not... mean... you... have... gotten... away... with... this..." Vastra panted out between fits of laughter.

"Sure it doesn't." Clara replied, before tossing something else at the silurian. Vastra managed to catch what turned out to be a Indirubber hot water bottle, with the cap firmly in place and full of very warm water.

Almost before she could blink, Vastra was inside, and curled up around it in front of the main fireplace in the drawing room, along with her case notes.

"Any leads?" Clara asked, after a moment.

"The usual ill-wishers in the office, two secretarial staff who were trying to catch him for themselves, along with a rival for Miss Parker. The rival was in his club all evening on the night of the attack and the theft, we have witnesses who saw him drowning his sorrows until he could barely stand, at which point he was poured into a cab and escorted home by a friend, who poured him into bed about the same time the watch was broken."

"You've eliminated the two 'jilted' secretaries from your enquiries?"

"The man's head was stoved in with a walking stick with a head several inches in diameter. This isn't a weapon that a woman would easily have access to, or would chose to attack someone with. If this was one of the secretaries, I'd expect him to have been stabbed with a paperknife, or poisoned. If he'd been stabbed, I'd expect him to have survived, because the blade would have been unlikely to strike anything more vital than a lung, and would probably have been embedded in a rib."

"Right..." Clara said, slightly unnerved. "Did the irregulars find anything out?"

"Three cabinet ministers appear to be having affairs with various ambassador's wives, and someone they recognise as a German agent was plugging some sort of technical diagrams up and down embassy row, but apparently they were for a new type of naval cannon. We also have intelligence that an agent working for the Tsar was in the area of the Admiralty at the time, and that he received a bag of some description from another man, although the boy who saw them didn't get a good look at him."

"Which is our man?" Clara asked.

"I haven't got any idea." Vastra replied, honestly. "I also have no idea at all how the victim was killed where he was, as he appears to have had his head bashed in on the top of a moving railway carriage on the London Underground."

"How...?" Carla asked, for a moment, seeing her confusion mirrored on the face of the silurian detective.

"Honestly, I have no idea at all." Vastra replied, before picking up a fresh sheet of notes, while Clara headed back through to the kitchen.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

Jenny was snuggled, a phrase she had never though she'd be using to describe what she was doing on a prison bed. Huddled was the term she'd have used to describe her previous two nights, spent on a slab of hardwood without any feature to provide any form of comfort. Tonight, though, she was snuggled into six inches of fresh straw, with a brand new blanket wrapped around her and even a pillow to rest her head on. Add to that that she was busily fighting her way into a tower full of trainers, all of whom wished to defeat her for the points and indeed the money that rested on such matches, and she was as happy as a pig in muck, even with the heavy steel chains still connecting her ankles together, and having to strongly resist the urge to use the lockpicks tucked inside the spine of her gameboy case to remove them. Eventually, she drifted off to sleep, happy and content for a few long moments.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

When she was eating tagine, Vastra seemed to have very different table manners, compared to the constantly irritating way she'd eaten her steak the previous night. Admittedly, she was busily using her tongue to fish out every single piece of meat, seeming to flatten the end to allow herself to scoop up various lumps of vegetable at the same time as the meat. She seemed to be doing so with playful joy, and wasn't slurping the sauce in the slightest.

She was even behaving herself with the wine, which was being offered first, and hadn't once tried to drink from the bottle.

Clara had served herself a smaller portion, and was managing to keep up with the silurian's relentless pace, although she was keeping a very careful eye on the six foot prehensile tongue, on the basis that she did not want to find it sneaking over the corner of her bowl, and stealing all of her sauce.

Other than one threatened bash with a small rolling pin she'd brought to the table for the purpose, the tongue kept away from her bowl, although it did make several pilgrimages to a small plate of nuts, which quickly vanished.

Afterwards, they adjourned to the drawing room, for brandy and cheese.

**Authors note: I'd like to thank Insane Jellyfish, Ceridwyn2 and TheTightTux for their reviews to the previous chapter. This chapter marks the drought point at which Artful Dodger continues, although the next chapter will be mostly domestic at the Row.**


	24. A talk over brandy and cheese

Clara had taken several precautions when laying out the cheeseboard, ensuring that there were a wide range of items for Vastra to enjoy, including a small pile of curried fillets of lamb, a pot of jellied eels, a wide selection of oregano-free chutneys, along with a selection of cheeses, ranging from imported brie to west country hard cheeses, all of strengths that would leave most humans a little alarmed, but like sweets to Vastra, particularly the one that included candied pineapples. She had provided a selection of less potent cheeses as well, along with an ample supply of crackers.

She had also pointedly provided a cheese knife, on the basis that Vastra was not going to be using her claws to cut the cheese, a policy she was prepared to enforce with a rolling pin.

There was also a selection of brandies and other after meal drinks, such as port and sherry.

Vastra, much to Clara's surprise, seemed adept in the employment of cutlery, at least after it had been made very clear to her, with the aid of a rolling pin, that she was going to be using it. She quickly began layering several different cheeses and chutneys on top of some oatcakes, flavoured with cinnamon, before engulfing each construction with a great deal of enjoyment.

"Ma'am?" Clara asked, slightly nervous, after Vastra had ingested the best part of two-thousand calories worth of cheeses, oatcakes and chutney. "Will you be requiring my body-heat tonight?"

"Is it available, despite everything today?" Vastra asked.

"Only if you promise to behave." Clara told her, grinning.

"I think I can manage to behave however you want." Vastra said, with a wink.

"If you even try..." Clara said, watching another mound of cheese and chutney vanish.

"Clara, I'm many things, some of them not very pleasant. But one of the things I am not and will never be is a rapist. If you'd wanted to, I would have accepted the comfort. But I would never force myself upon you."

"I would hope not." Clara said, watching the Silurian entwine herself around the bolster in her chair, almost like a kitten.

"Clara, if you were going to kill someone on top of a train, where would you do it?" Vastra asked, after a few minutes of silence, which Clara passed by staring into the fire.

"On an open stretch of track, without viaducts or tunnels, and with a very long train." Clara replied.

"So not the underground?"

"Definitely not." Clara said before asking after a few moments of thought. "You said there was a big pool of blood. Are you sure that it was human blood?"

"Why?" Vastra asked, before an extremely complex series of calculations seemed to flicker behind her eyes. "I didn't taste it." She explained. "There was no reason to. There was a body with its head smashed in, and it was lying in a pool of blood..."

"How long would you say it would have taken him to die?"

"A few... moments..." Vastra said, ponderingly, before breaking off again.

"How much would he have bled in that time?" Clara asked.

"Not that much..." Vastra replied, her eyes seemingly flicking through files stored in her mind.

-0-0-0-0-0-

Getting ready for bed was less of a trial the second night for Clara.

She was pottering around the kitchen, wearing a pair of Vastra's slippers to protect her feet from the stone floor, chilled almost to freezing by the low temperatures.

The milk was heating for the silurian's cocoa, and she was carefully looking through the cupboards.

Inside what appeared to be a packet of Victorian breakfast cereal, she was not entirely surprised to find what looked suspiciously like Special K, complete with clusters and freeze dried berries. There was also a carefully concealed pump-action shotgun in the base of the cupboard, along with a box of modern cartridges, covered with an oiled rag.

When she heard the kitchen door open very quietly, she immediately left the pantry, to confront and extremely sooty Vastra, who seemed to be in possession of what looked suspiciously like a large jar of oregano.

"Hoi!" She yelled

"Clara..." Vastra said, nervously.

"You know full well that you're banned from the spice rack, on pain of being served a beefburger without any accompaniment." She said, not quite yelling.

"Jenny would never..."

"I'm not Jenny." Clara said, grinning.

Then they both broke out laughing.

"You wouldn't... really..." Vastra gasped.

"Only in extremis." Clara replied, before pulling something out of the pocket of the cook's apron she was wearing and tossing it at the silurian, who neatly fielded it with her tongue, which retracted rapidly, taking the bone-meal and honey dog treat with it, and producing an almost subsonic purr, along with a shiver as she swallowed the treat.

"That was unexpected." Vastra grinned. "I don't suppose that there are any more?"

"Not yet." Clara said, before the tongue peeked out of the silurian's mouth, just in the corner. "That thing had better stay away from my pockets." Clara instructed Vastra. "If it even attempts to pickpocket me, it will find I have mousetraps as well."

Vastra just shot her an 'I can't believe that you would do that to an innocent silurian' look.

She grinned back, before slipping her hand into her pocket and producing a mousetrap, which she showed Vastra for a moment, before slipping it back inside.

After a few moments of exchanging grins, she turned around, before scooping several spoonfuls of cocoa essence into the milk, and pouring a cup for each of them.

The silurian scooped up her cup quickly, noticing that the total dosage she'd be consuming was about two spoonfuls, before heading upstairs.

In the bedroom, Clara had provided a nightdress for her.

"Clara, where is my nightdress?" Vastra asked, confused by the jungle green garment laid out on the bed, which seemed to lack anyone's scent.

"In the back of a dogcart." Clara replied from the doorway, having already drunk her own hot chocolate. "The ragman came around at about half five."

"Why?" Vastra asked, looking almost distraught.

"Because it was entirely the wrong colour, and made out of a material that doesn't retain heat. This one is made of finely woven wool, with a mixture of threads including dog hair."

Vastra just looked at her for a moment. If Clara's sense of smell had been more sensitive, she'd have been able to detect the aroma of 'My favourite nightdress has been binned' along with 'sad and unhappy', both of which the silurian was radiating.

"This one will be nice and warm." Clara reassured her, before ducking behind the privacy screen and changing into her own nightdress. "Where's Strax?"

"He's on holiday." Vastra replied.

"Him, on holiday?" Clara asked, incredulous. "Where?"

"I believe he is taking a tour of the bar-fighting areas of Glasgow." Vastra replied, clambering into her new dress, and squirming slightly to find out how it felt against her skin. "It keeps him from getting bored." The dress felt smooth and warm, and surprisingly easy to snuggle into. Gingerly, she clambered into bed, before snuggling against Clara as soon as the human girl joined her, luxuriating in the presence of the extra heat that Clara was able to provide.

**Author's note: This chapter has been delayed somewhat more than usual by a bad case of writers block. Hopefully, this has now been resolved, and the story can start to move forward again. I'd like to thank TheTightTux, VastraJennyLove, Insane Jellyfish and Ceridywn2 for their reviews.**


	25. An Avalance, and Bacon

Clara woke up with someone curled up around her, much to her confusion, considering that her environment was nothing like the bedroom she and Danny shared when they were at his house, or the smaller room in her flat, with the bed they somehow managed to both fit into, and avoid falling out of. The bed was an four poster, with thick wool curtains gathered around it, and a almost solid headboard, excepting several small symmetrical gaps. The cover over her was almost stiflingly thick and warm, with a pattern of what looked almost like dinosaurs, rendered in a primitive style.

She looked up at her bedmate, twisting her head to release herself from what felt like a somewhat scaled chin, and the last few days came back in a flash. Vastra, a silurian detective marooned in Victorian London, and who had ultimately fallen in love with her maid and carer, was busy using her as a endothermic hot water bottle. She just smiled, as she disentangled herself from the warmth seeking silurian's body, before disappearing down to the kitchen.

Quickly, she darted into the pantry, grateful that she'd remembered to slip her feet inside her borrowed slippers before doing so, as she was able to feel the chill of the uninsulated stone floor even through the thick soles of the slippers, which, incongruously, were in the shape of a cartoon rendition of a tyrannosaur. They were also green.

Quickly, she extracted Jenny's packet of cereal, pouring a generous measure into a bowl, before fetching in the almost frozen milk from the rear step, and pouring about a third of a pint over her cereal. It tasted very rewarding, and she allowed herself to savour the taste of home for a few minutes, before heading back into the pantry, and plucking up the courage to open Vastra's cupboard.

She was immediately buried under an avalanche of meat products.

-0-0-0-0-0-

Vastra came awake when she heard the avalanche.

At first, she struggled to place the rumble, thinking that the roof had lost a tile or three, or that a heavy cart had gone past the house too close to the kerb.

Then she heard the swearing.

Helplessly, she just collapsed onto the bed, laughing. Jenny had made it a policy to open said cupboard with a window hook for some time, given the sheer amount of meat Vastra had stacked inside the innocent looking cupboard, all of it from named animals, that were specifically called something other than "Bill" or "Spot". Mostly, during the winter, it contained huge amounts of bacon and other pork products, all of which were wrapped in greaseproof paper. Vastra liked bacon. And sausages. And pork chops. And any other forms of pork she could acquire. But especially bacon. It came in unsliced slabs of meat, usually smoked, if she had any say in the matter. She preferred hee bacon at last a centimetre thick. Admittedly, smoking bacon did cause some slight changes, mostly that it was an excellent cure for SAD. In Vastra's case, that meant 'Silurian annoyance disorder' usually manifesting as short temperedness for everyone around her due to the playing of irritating practical jokes on anyone in the area. It was an efficient way of procuring bacon sandwiches.

Reluctantly, she prised herself out of bed, before clambering into her specifically designed dressing gown, with three layers of warmth reflecting foil underneath the thick, smooth layers of wool cloth, topped with a layer of velvet on the outside of the garment, and with a layer of sinfully luxurious shahtoosh wool, gathered in her own time period. It was warm and extremely soft, playing over her skin like warm water, and leaving her feeling a lot more able to face the stresses of life among apes. Jenny had sown several pouches of aromatherapy herbs into the collar, along with a pouch containing a length of her hair, which the silurian tucked her nose against for a second, before keening a dirge in her throat, then heading into the kitchen.

When she pushed open the door, she could see a number of paper wrapped cuts of meat that had split beyond the door leading into the pantry, and was unsurprised when several more cuts of meat followed them, clearly being hurled or pushed away as Clara dug her way out of trouble.

She decided, after several moments, to go and help.

Vastra being Vastra, help mostly meant standing in the doorway, watching in amusement, although she did scoop several large piles out of the way, allowing the human to excavate herself from under two hundred kilos of beef and pork in about ten minutes, without suffering any serious injuries from the tsunami of meat.

Then the ape drew herself to her feet, glaring belligerently at Vastra, despite the difference in their heights.

"Would you care to explain that large pile, Ma'am?" Clara asked, the aggression in her posture confused with scents of amusement and meat.

"It was a discount sale at a meat wholesalers." Vastra replied. "I wanted to stock up, and they were doing an "all you can fit in a dogcart sale. As it turned out, with the doors closed, you can get a quarter of a tonne of meat, mostly bacon, and a certain amount of steak, in one."

"And it's all in one cupboard because...?"

"It's all in one cupboard because Jenny refused to let me use the coal cellar as a meat store, and the game larder is already full of meat, particularly pheasant and venison, which Jenny insisted we lay on for 'the season' although she's never explained what it is." Vastra said, with a 'so there' snap in her voice.

"And you actually needed that much meat?" Clara asked, probingly.

"I might have run out, otherwise." Vastra said.

"Did you actually need the meat?"

"I had a few days worth in the cupboard." Vastra replied, before receiving Clara's version of the eyebrows of doom. "I admit, I possibly didn't." She finally said, shortly before Clara hurled a joint of bacon at her. "And that was what Jenny did when I arrived home, although it was a sustained barrage." She said, remembering the barrage of vipuritation that her maid had fired in her direction in accompaniment to the meat when Vastra arrived home triumphantly, expecting her wife to be happy at the hunting prowess she was displaying, along with the similar barrage of words she'd directed at Strax for not sitting on her firmly when she saw the sign.

She'd herded the silurian inside with a string of sausages and a whole leg of lamb, before firmly making it very clear that she was now banned from going shopping without Jenny to supervise her. She had also made it clear that the appearance of any large holes in her lawn filled with meat would be punished by withdrawal of all bedtime activities for a month, and by having to sleep in separate bedrooms during that time. As for stashing her haul in the coal cellar, the punishment had been unspecified, but said to involve "ice cubes, rodents and the outhouse."

Vastra had reluctantly piled it into her cupboard, just managing to fit nearly a quarter of a tonne in the cupboard without it falling off the wall or exploding. Jenny had shown how much she loved Vastra by laughing at the bulging doors, before Vastra finally wedged a length of firewood through them, having had the window pole for the kitchen window, Jenny's rolling pin, a coat hanger and a bokken firmly confiscated by her wife.

The assorted fillet le bent banker that had been occupying the cupboard, and maturing nicely, had been removed with a bucket, and disposed of in several of Jenny's flower beds, something the human girl seemed remarkably unconcerned about, despite her consistent refusal to sample steak ala pederast or torte de la poisoner. Vastra had been saving them for Christmas, and finding that they'd been removed and disposed of had made her sad. Jenny had noticed, and decided to make a point. "Look 'ere, ya daft ole thing, I tol' ya before, ya ain't allowed ta keep em more than a week." She'd reminded Vastra, who'd responded with a sharp hiss, before being belted around the head with the nearest pillow.

Vastra grinned at the memory, before Clara walked past her, carrying a supply of bacon under her arm, before unwrapping it from the roll of greaseproof paper, and using a small tanto to slice pieces off of the side of bacon, before flipping them into a frying pan, using what looked like an adapted Japanese razor fan, milled into the form of a spatula. The smell of cooking bacon quickly drew the silurian back into the room, and she darted over to the breadbin, quickly extracting a loaf of what looked like granary bread, before attacking it with another sword, slicing quickly through it with a small, serrated katana. Almost before the stub of the loaf had landed, she was darting into the pantry again, before emerging with a bottle of what appeared to be tomato ketchup, which was slathered over the bread in moments. Thirty seconds later, Clara used the second spatula to extract the available bacon, and flip it onto the bread, before Vastra sliced the bread and meat in two with one stroke from the katana, then darted around the corner.

Thirty seconds later, she was back, with a look on her face reminiscent of a golden retriever staring up at someone's sandwich while sitting with its tail wagging just at the tip.

"No!" Clara said, firmly. "Jenny's notes say that you are not allowed a second sandwich if you're going to be working." Vastra cocked her head to one side, and attempted to produce a whining noise. "I said no." Clara told her, raising the spatula threateningly.

Vastra disappeared, clearly disappointed, judging by the almost telegraphed body language, before Clara heard her pad into the study, then put her own bacon in the pan.

**At the time of writing, it is six hours since, after a ten year journey, a landing probe successfully touched down on a comet nucleus for the first time, with the potential to discover huge amounts about the origin of life in the universe, along with further information about the formation of the solar system. I would like to thank Ceridwyn2, The TightTux, Insane Jellyfish, TheBigCat and Son of Whitebeard for their reviews to the previous chapter.**


	26. Sausages and a breakthrough

Inside her drawing room, Vastra busied herself with a wide variety of items, extracted from various cubby holes in the large desk and combined pigeon hole stack she kept in one corner of her main operations room, including a map of the tube, a large scale ordnance survey map of London, with the tube lines plotted on it, five different catalogues from assorted stick manufacturers, a stock of jerky sticks, and three additional data capture forms, which she'd gathered all of the information she could on the various individuals involved.

About ten minutes later, Clara wandered in, carrying a pot of tea, a supply of biscuits, including the rarely seen bourbons that lived in the special box that only Jenny could find, and two cold sausages. Her tongue whipped out immediately, snaring one of the sausages, before coiling and whipping it back into her mouth.

"Mhht'pl me uh moo mot..." Vastra began, before a newspaper traversed the room at speed, and collided with the top of her head.

"No speaking with your mouth full." Clara reminded her.

"Morry." Vastra said, swallowing the last of her sausage. "Clara, this is the most complex part of any investigation. I need a constant supply of tea, cuddles and a sounding board."

"Tea is something I can do." Clara said. "As for cuddling or posing in my underwear, you can pretend that you never considered it as an idea." She got the very sad face and smell in response. "Don't look at me like that. It won't work. My neighbour's puppy tries that every time I walk past with a cereal bar. He's never had one yet."

"I need them..." Vastra tried out, hopefully. "They, er... help my amygdala processes."

"Those are the last thing I want to be helping." Clara reminded her. "Last time I affected those, I spent the next fourteen hours in an armbinder, before you groped me when I passed out while making your tea."

"Clara, I've already apologised once for that, but again, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have been such an idiot as to take advantage." She again deployed her most endearing face.

"No." Clara said, firmly, as if speaking to a disobedient puppy surrounded by the remains of a crisp packet. "Bad silurian." Then they both burst out laughing.

-0-0-0-0-0-

Jenny was walking the wheel again, exhausted, despite it being barely ten in the morning. Her morning meal, such as it had been, had consisted of oatmeal, water and salt. There had been a jug of water provided, which she had gratefully downed, along with a foaming pint mug filled with root beer. Her ankle chains had been adjusted in the guard room, although it hadn't lengthened her stride, it had, importantly, made it far easier to walk in them, especially on the wheel. She hadn't been able to see exactly what had been done, but they felt more comfortable.

_Normally, about now, I'd be going back into Vastra's room, armed with a bucket of cold water, and turfing her out of bed. _She thought, smiling at the inevitable offended and sad face she'd be given, before the Silurian affected reluctance and clambered out of bed. _Silly ol' thing. I know she knows how to get up by herself. She managed before she found me, anyway._

The thought of Vastra's amusement if she'd ever simply put her foot down firmly, and insisted she got up by herself made her grin slightly, but she carried on, knowing that her break was in another few minutes.

-0-0-0-0-0-

Vastra was completely frustrated. She'd run hundreds of scenarios in her head, trying to explain he circumstances she was faced with.

_Body on train roof. Probably not killed there. Blood planted, to give us a false belief that the killing occurred on the train roof. Preparation or an experienced person. Likely not first murder. Preparation unlikely. Cause of death inconsistent with a premeditated killing. A stick is going to be the first weapon that came to hand. If this was premeditated, and the killer as clever as he thinks he is, we'd never have found the body, or had any evidence of foul play. So they were disturbed. But what where they disturbed doing..._ She wondered, as Clara poured her another cup of tea. The Silurian absently blew on her drink, before sampling it with an extremely cautious tongue. _Perfect. Given the circumstances, they must have been copying the technical diagrams, intending to return them. No point having a theft that would be remarked on by the first man to open the safe. They'd have been trying to copy them, quickly and accurately. For some reason, they weren't using a camera. If we're dealing with a spy, you can guarantee the foreign office were keeping an eye on him. Nothing more than per-forma surveillance, but he wouldn't have wanted to jump it, because they'd have hit him with half a dozen tails, and probably searched his rooms on some suitable grounds. He would have been therefore hesitant to bring a camera that capable onto the country, and he'd have been investigated to within an inch of his life if he'd brought one in the capital, or travelled to do so elsewhere. _She glanced at another item, a list of the plan pages that had been removed, and those she'd recovered. _We've got the periscope, the steering mechanism, the basic drove system, the various compartments like the mess and the bunkroom, and all of the other systems that require little adaptation for a submarine. What we haven't got is the periscope mechanisms, or the torpedo tube design, or the specific close-up showing how the prop-shaft is waterproofed. If those were retained, it means that they're being copied, as they would have been the most crucial possible systems, and those which would take years to reinvent. _She glanced at another map, briefly, before looking up at the clock. _Ten past eleven. I want to go and visit something. The country. _She thought. _I haven't had the chance to visit somewhere with rabbits for months, or sheep. _She smiled, remembering the pleasure of walking through an ornamental garden and looking out onto the rolling hills and moorland that was the South Downs.

"Clara, could you go and fetch my .22 rifle and cartridges from the pantry?" Vastra asked, seeming strangely upbeat all of a sudden.

"Why?" Clara responded, with a tone suggesting that there were correct reasons and incorrect reasons for the request, and that Vastra had better be making the request for the correct reasons.

"I need some time to catch my thoughts, and I find that that happens best in the country." Vastra said.

"And you want a small calibre rifle because...?"

"Because I haven't had rabbit in weeks, since Jenny insisted on restocking the game larder with venison and pheasant. Neither of which I actually like. She also banned me from cooking squirrels I'd caught in the park."

"So, in essence, we're going to be traveling through London to visit a national park, in order to shoot at innocent rabbits on the grounds you're peckish." Clara stated, her tone of voice suggesting that the idea seemed entirely inappropriate.

"That's wrong?"

"Yes." Her tone of voice was several degrees the far side of absolute zero. "If you want rabbits, I can go and visit the butcher's. As for squirrels..." Her tone suggested that those would be best left unmolested.

"Clara, I need to get outside the capital for a bit." She explained, hopefully.

"Would you like to stop trying to come up with a pretext for whatever it is you actually want to accomplish, and just explain it to me?" Clara said, firmly.

"Jenny always likes taking excursion trains. And going to the beach." Vastra said.

"Hoi. I said stop fencing, and start explaining."

"I want to find out where on the underground trains stop under a house or other property regularly, and predictably, particularly on that line."

"If you'd said that at the start, I wouldn't have complained." Clara told her wryly.

"Everyone else usually humours me..."

"Enough."

They grinned at each other, Vastra looking like a chastised cross between an Asari and a saltwater crocodile, before Clara made a suggestion she should have known she was going to regret.

"Do you want me to go and get the carriage?"

-0-0-0-0-0-

An hour later, she was discovering the hard way that driving a horse drawn carriage in traffic is a hell of a lot harder than it looked, even from the shotgun seat. Admittedly, in this carriage's case, there was a semi-automatic shotgun under her seat, with a sawn-off barrel shortening the barrel to the approximate length of the tubular magazine. According to Vastra, the first load in the magazine was rock salt, followed by 250 birdshot, then 30 buckshot, then two slugs. She assumed that if she got to the slugs, something had gone seriously wrong in any event.

She had watched a documentary about carriage driving recently enough to remember the basic commands, along with steering and acceleration, as well as deceleration, giving her enough of a grounding to at least be able to navigate through the streets, which hadn't changed much, as far as she could tell. Drivers who thought that right of way was calculated by tonnage and aggression seemed as common, although she was relieved to see that cyclists were fewer in number and far more cautious, and that, surprisingly, omnibus drivers seemed to have not yet developed the aggressive and dangerous attitude towards them that characterised bus-driver/cyclist relations in the 21st century.

Because of her relative lack of skill, it took her half an hour to navigate to the headquarters of the London Underground driver's union. She was able to pull up in a stable yard, before leaving her horse with nosebag fitted and attached to a post, before heading inside.

**Author's note: it's been quite a while, but I've finally produced this chapter. I'm planning to wrap up this case in another chapter or two, and I have plans for the subsequent case, which I intend to be entirely of my own devising, rather than borrowed from ACD. **

**I'd also like to express my own condolences to the friends, family and teammates of Phillip Hughes, who died far too young, as a rising star of cricket. May God bless him, and his family and friends in this difficult time. Cricket is a sport very few people would consider dangerous, but sometimes the ten million to one chance comes up.**

**I'd like to thank TheTightTux, VastraJennyLove, Insane Jellyfish, and two unnamed guests for their reviews to the previous chapter. I also hope they can manage to fix that probe.**


	27. Information is gained and a wall climbed

Inside, the union office was fogged with blue smoke, forming a layer near the ceiling, which was far less impressive than in most headquarters, simply being layered with plain white plaster, which was yellowed by the perpetual pipe smoke. To the left, basic stairs led to an upper floor, cracked tiles forming their own elegant mosaic, while to the left, a sign indicated Westminster Rest. As there was a black licensing plaque over the door, this suggested that an unused railway sign had been repurposed, with the second word painted out and substituted, presumably by the same people who created the original signage, particularly given the silver tankard painted on the sign.

The room also featured a desk, behind which two burly figures were ensconced, wearing clothing that looked as if they'd stolen it.

Vastra marched up to the desk.

"My name is Madame Vastra. I need to speak to Mr Charles on an urgent matter." She announced. "My maid, Clara, will act as chaperone."

"One moment." The larger of the two said, before picking up a speaking tube that looked as if it was made using left-overs from a locomotive. "Ellie, we've got a Madame Vastra and her maid to see Brendan." There was a vaguely understandable chattering noise from the other end. "I'll send them up, then." He gestured to the stairs, before continuing "Mr O'Hara is able to see you now. First door at the top of the stairs."

As she walked past, Clara glanced at the surface of the desk, and spotted an open pack of cards, concealed under a flat railwayman's cap. In the 21st century, it would have been a minimized window featuring online poker or solitaire.

Vastra marched up the stairs, before turning into the office where the union official was rising to meet her. He was, again, dressed in garments that looked as if they were stolen, although they were somewhat better tailored than the door staff. The man's desk was an organised jumble of papers, forming two continental stacks, with an oceanic trench of clear space between them, featuring a battered stretch of green leather, and just a few sheets of paper. Even Vastra was forced to look up slightly at the man, who had the craggy face of a man used to settling disputes with an impromptu display of pugilism, coupled with red hair and a rugged underlying bone structure.

"I'm assuming you're here about some element of scheduling for the train that poor bastard was found dead behind." He said, sticking a hand into his 'out-pile'. "As it happens, I've got a copy of the driver's log, which should shed some light on things." He said, handing over a sheet of paper, with a log-book page printed on one side."

"Is there anywhere on that stretch where the trains stop between stations?" She asked.

"In case he hopped out before the station?"

"Yes." Vastra said, completely poker-faced, even behind her veiled hat.

"There are a couple of places where the signals need fixing." He said, before reaching into his pile again, and extracting a map showing the underground network, and the roads and houses it passed underneath. "There's a signal issue between and," he said. "And the points require manual assistance here." He continued, tapping the map briefly.

"Is there anywhere before Westminster bridge road, where the body was found?" She asked. "I'm wondering if a sufficiently athletic person could have gained access to the tracks that way."

"Now, ya see, if there were something where you could gain access, I suspect someone would have mentioned it to me, as I'm sure that the fenians would love that sort of thing. I would rather that they were kept well away from the tracks, as the packages they leave behind make a right mess of things." He told her. "I know that here," he tapped the map again. "Here, a bunch of foreigners have various balconies and such overlooking the tracks."

"Which of them have you had the most trouble with?" Vastra asked.

"Number eight. Some contessa or some such, who seems to think that we should be singing hymns while we work, and that all the brown bags of 'the devil's brew' should be confiscated. Now, I'm sure they weren't singing anything that would be offensive, but I know the lads like to sing drinking songs and shanties when they're laying track or repairing the brickwork. Most of them are alright, though. I don't think we've ever had any trouble from the Russian exile at number three, apart from the time he came down and joined in with the singing, and the drinking, and he always seems to be at least two sheets to the wind whenever we see him. That said, he has a big old hedge at the back, and another around the front."

Vastra passed about another ten or so minutes discussing assorted matters, such as travel costs, the union movement, a certain amount about Ireland, which revealed that, while O'Hara was in favour of a free Ireland, he wasn't in favour of freeing the country via outrages such as blowing up a bunch of young men who'd been sent to Ireland by their superiors and were no different to anyone else, even if they did wear red jackets.

When they got outside, Vastra hopped into the carriage, before extracting a stick of beef jerky from one of the inside pockets, and being given a stern look by Clara. The human girl quickly detached the horse from the hitching post, having packed away the nosebag full of oats, vitamins and a small amount of treacle, before climbing up behind it, and heading in the direction of Paternoster row.

It took them about fifteen minutes to traverse the streets, most of which Clara spent exchanging invective and parentage allusions with the other traffic, while forging her way through in a slow, but reasonable fashion.

When the carriage arrived in the coach yard to the rear of the Row, she clambered down, before hauling open the door.

Inside, Vastra was curled up on the seat, which seemed to feature a padded hollow large enough for her to fit into, with the remains of a stick of jerky protruding from behind her left ear, fast asleep.

"Hoi!" She yelled. "This is the last stop, and if you don't get out, I'll be back with a bucket of water. With ice."

Vastra jumped almost vertically into the air, dropping momentarily into a combat stance, before suddenly scrambling around to find the suddenly dislodged stick of jerky that had fallen from behind her ear.

"Clara, please don't startle me." Vastra said, trying what she thought was a pleading tone. "It plays havoc with my digestion."

"Why were you asleep?" Clara demanded.

"I..."

"...raided the pantry, and had a whole roasting joint of beef?" Clara finished.

"I didn't think you would notice..."

"I spend most of my time supervising a mixed gender class of adolescent humans." Clara replied. "I could lose my job if I failed to notice two of them sneaking out at the same time." She grinned slightly, remembering a time she'd demonstrated that the door to the stationary supply room was not nearly secure enough to stop a teacher with a master key and a large bucket of something the science teacher had made up for her, which was several times more freezing than ice, and wouldn't damage paper. She'd then set the head teacher on the errant pair, armed with the facts.

"I was hungry..."

"No, you were comfort eating, and having far too much food."

The silurian once again tried puppy-dog eyes.

Clara just shook her head, smiling despite herself.

"I've got a large _vegetarian_ moussaka on its way." She informed the horrified silurian. "You do like ground forest mushrooms, don't you?"

"Jenny insists they're a part of the full English breakfast, along with tomatoes and baked beans." Vastra said, leaving out that the full English was the most efficient way of extracting her from bed, not to mention that the mushrooms were the second thing to disappear, after the bacon, of course.

"It's on the cooling shelf." Clara explained. "I suspected we'd be needing something we can eat on the job." Vastra gave her a genuine surprised look. "I spend all my time traveling with _him_. I'm going to become paranoid."

"I don't suppose you made any garlic bread?" Vastra asked, hopefully, before dodging the gently flicked coachman's whip Clara sent her way.

"You aren't allowed anywhere near the stuff." Clara replied. "I do not want to be bailing you out of the police station for starting a riot."

"_It was only the one time."_ Vastra tried, hopefully.

"No!"

A few minutes later, Clara hurried inside, having ensured the horse was attached to the hitching rail, and that Vastra was inside the carriage, hopefully sleeping off three kilos of beef roasting joint. She quickly transferred the moussaka into what appeared to be a 21st century Tupperware box, before adding a second with two Tupperware plates, and some plastic cutlery, most of which showed tooth marks from a set of pointed, carnivorous teeth. She also found a thermos demijohn, which was quickly and efficiently filled with large amounts of tea, with a pint of milk added, before being laboriously lugged out to the carriage, along with a far smaller flask of what appeared to be navy rum. The packed lunch was tossed in on top of the massive flask of tea, before she reluctantly poked Vastra awake with the fire poker.

"Number three gaywood road?" She asked.

"Yez." Vastra replied. "Thiz one will join you when we get there."

Reluctantly, Clara once again set off, remembering some of the warnings about not going south of the river after midnight. She also remembered the thankfully expired caution for being drunk and disorderly she'd picked up as a young student at one of the London teaching colleges, after being detained for a section five public order offence, although she would dispute ever having used the p word to describe a police officer.

Thankfully, the traffic was far lightly, mostly being the equivalent of delivery vans, with a large number of hackney cabs thrown into the mix, but she was able to make steady progress to a mews just a bit south of the river, where she negotiated "two shillings six an hour, and if you lose the horse, I'll send Madame to ask for it back." Vastra had been poked determinedly awake using a pitchfork, and had been sufficiently grumpy and unusual looking to ensure that the horse wouldn't be lost.

They turned onto the road with their destination near the top, before clambering over the wall and vanishing into the remarkably heavy shrubbery, avoiding the various hawthorns and roses that seemed to have been planted in the middle of other shrubbery for no readily apparent reason to Clara.

**I seem to have slowed down chapter production lately, for which I can only apologise. Also, just to clarify, the P word does not refer to any part of the officer's anatomy, and is actually Pleb, which a high court judge recently convicted, in effect, a senior conservative MP of calling a police officer in September 2012, after a row over a bicycle, the security gates on downing street, and not opening them for his bicycle. He also made suggestions he'd "get them", having first called them "F***ing plebs" for which we was nearly arrested for a section five public order offence, which is basically swearing at a police officer, being told not to swear by the officer, and giving them another torrent of abuse. In the UK, the Conservative party are the party of privilege, mostly educated in fee paying schools, and usually Oxbridge graduates, often in with a degree in "Politics, philosophy and economics," although I'm convinced the British chancellor failed the last one by getting his answers the wrong way around. Having an MP from the "toffs" call a PC a "Pleb", and keep his job for more than a week, before being forced to resign as chief whip, seemed to be rather damaging.**

**I need to confess to a class A Research Boob, involving the London underground network. To be precise, this story is set in about 1895, according to my head cannon, which I just spent ten minutes trying to find if I'd ever actually dropped a precise date into either a PM or an note. As it turned out, the actual dating evidence was a reference to "The Importance of Being Earnest", which confirms that I had used that date previously. Unfortunately, Elephant and Castle Underground station wasn't opened until 1906, but I'm going to leave it in there to avoid having to bugger around with every chapter featuring the underground.**

**Sorry for the essays, but I'd rather explain things at length than have to go into the minutiae of British law and politics and culture/history repeatedly in other chapters. Also, this fic is generating noodle incidents faster than the British government, which I am planning to turn into actual stories of their own, probably in the near future. I'd also like to express my usual, and heartfelt thanks to all my readers and reviewers, and thank Ceridwyn2, TheTightTux, whose name is now inveigled into the autocomplete on my Kindle, Insane Jellyfish, Son of Whitebeard, and VastraJennyLove for their reviews and commentary. Also, can anyone recognise the character Vastra is briefly impersonating just before the journey starts**


	28. Arrests are made, and cocoa planned

The thick shrubbery was very poorly laid out, in Vastra's book. There were no sight lines left in it that would useless from the road, but excellent from the house. It was just thick, thorny vegetation, which seemed to pose a problem for Clara, judging by the constant hissed swear words and occasional sounds of clothing ripping. Vastra, who'd planned for the possibility, was wearing her cat suit, which had nothing to do with the fact that it smelt of Jenny, or the "'secret' pocket containing a stock of beef jerky, along with Jenny's spare lock picks.

When they finally reached the doors, Clara having managed to avoid the wait-a-while vine in the last patch of vegetation by luck, Vastra pulled up short.

"Damn it." She muttered, before switching to Silurian. This is a problem that should have been factored in, but is incredibly annoying

"Clara," she said, in English. "Can you pick locks?"

"I've got a Doctor, remember." She said. "Normally, he just waves his sonic screwdrivery thing, and the doors open, like that."

"Jenny banned me from trying, because I kept damaging the lock picks too much."

"So, we improvise." Clara said, wracking her brain for an actual plan. "How about this?" She said, before simply grabbing the knocker, and banging the heavy cast iron bar against the receiver plate making an absolute racket.

Vastra just reached under her coat, before producing a large leather cosh, and taking a step to one side of the door.

The man who answered the door was holding a pistol in one hand, so Vastra felt very little guilt about bringing the cosh down extremely hard on his head, landing the blow just behind his left ear, sending him smoothly toppling forwards, before stepping rapidly through the door, feeling extremely grateful that she and Jenny had stored their spare bullet proof vests in the carriage, and that Clara was wearing one. With the vest on, being shot fatally by the archaic slug throwing weapons that humans used was considerably less likely, although both of them could still get very unlucky with any given bullet, especially if one scored a golden bb hit, and severed a major artery. Clara had refused to wear one of the spare cat suits, protesting vociferously against wearing something with a variety of loops of metal attached to its wrists and ankles, particularly since it had a padlock looped through the fasteners.

Vastra moved ahead, leaving Clara to keep an eye on the driveway from inside the closed door, before padding down the corridor, sticking to the carpeted sections, and moving rapidly, but with almost no noise that could have been heard from more than a few yards away, keeping her katana in its sheath, and instead relying on the twenty-five ounce lead weight wrapped in an inch of leather to deal with troublemakers.

As it turned out, she didn't need it until she reached the study, at which point she curiously stuck her head around the door.

Inside, a fairly bulky Slav was sitting at a desk, using a device she'd seen a few times before, but never understood the purpose of. On one side, he had a sheet of blue paper, intricately covered by white lines, overlaying a grid. Each line, she saw, was being painstakingly plotted onto the sheet inside the device, creating a perfect copy. Her tongue, however, was itching, and seemed determined to lash out, and deliver a fatal dose of poison into the man's system before he had time to react.

"I'm impressed." She said, instead, stepping into the room. "You took considerable pains to avoid being identified at any point as having been involved.

"Who the hell are you?" He demanded.

"My name, which you will almost certainly have already heard, is Madame Vastra."

"Your reputation seems well deserved." He replied, surprisingly urbanely. "I wouldn't have expected a government official to be able to hire someone as competent as you."

"It was a change from hunting down stealing servants and fraudsters." Vastra said. "I've been bored, recently. There never seems to be a good murder at this time of year. People are too busy doing people things.

"I assume that the ordinary plodders are waiting outside, for me to make a dramatic confession."

"I'm alone, except for my maid, Clara." She said, before showing a mouth with far too many pointed teeth for the man's liking. "However, I wouldn't advise that you move, Mr Grigorievich. Or that you attempt to open the second drawer on the right hand side of your desk. Not if you want to walk out of here."

"What in heaven are you?" He asked.

"I am a lizard woman from the dawn of time, whose wife is currently imprisoned for a slip only an ape would hold against her. And if you make a threatening move towards me, or try and open that drawer, you will die."

"I have no intention of challenging you." He said.

"Good. Now, did you kill Arthur West?"

"Who?"

"He was a government clerk, recently engaged to be married. Three days ago, someone smashed in his head with a walking stick with a head three inches across, probably with a single blow. He was placed on the roof of a train which was stopped at the faulty signal underneath your house, along with about three rabbits worth of blood. The body was ultimately deposited on the tracks at Westminster Road station. _Did. You. Kill. Him._" She hissed, struggling to avoid shredding a pair of her burgling gloves, which she knew Jenny would whack her around the head for.

"I... He burst in, it was Milton. He grabbed my cane, and smashed him on the head with it, and he collapsed, and I knew he was dead."

"So you filled his pockets with the simple papers, the ones you were able to photograph easily using a normal camera, and dumped his body, in the hope it'd be found too far away to be localised, and for you to be tracked down."

"How did you know..."

"You were too good a neighbour to the railway. Most people would have complained, or ignored the workers and their work. You took an interest, which they clearly remembered, and that, along with a sighting of you and Milton near Admiralty House, was enough to tell me whose house to search."

The man sat there for a second. "I'm impressed."

"If you hadn't been involved in a man's death, I wouldn't have been investigating. You would have been up against that bungler Watson, or some bureaucrat used to investigating inter-departmental riffs. Instead, an innocent man is dead, and you had me on your track. Clara!" She called.

"Yes, ma'am?" The human girl called through.

"Stick your head out of the door for a few moments, and then call the home office. Tell them Vastra has the man who stole artful Dodger, and give them the address."

"Roger that."

-0-0-0-0-0-

Clara had been uncomfortable from the moment Vastra tried to hand her a weapon. Just holding a gun was a huge escalation in threat levels, and something that she had learnt from the doctor was that escalating the threat level that much was unprofitable, and extremely dangerous, unless you were willing to go that much further, and intend to use the weapons. Something she'd had drummed into her during her relatively brief spell in the combined cadet force was that you should never point a firearm, loaded or unloaded, at someone, unless you were willing and intending to shoot them, and that that you should never at shoot someone unless you were prepared and intending to kill them.

The only weapon, of it could even be described as such, that she'd accepted from Vastra was a small metal tube, closed at one end, with a mouthpiece at the other, and a small slot about a third of the way down its length.

"Clara?" She heard Vastra call, after about five minutes of muted conversation.

"Yes, ma'am?" She replied, sticking to her role as a Victorian servant.

"Stick your head out of the door for a few moments, and then call the home office. Tell them Vastra has the man who stole artful Dodger, and give them the address."

"Roger that." she called back, hauling open the door, before slipping the whistle, on a leather string, between her lips, and blowing three long blasts on it. If any of the nearby patrolling police constables had heard it, which was an near certainty, given their own possession of the same whistles, and their ubiquitous use in this era by private citizens for the purpose of summoning assistance, she estimated that at least two, probably four uniformed officers were currently approaching at a dead run.

Satisfied, she left the door open, before heading to the simple telephone on a stand next to the door, before simply picking it up, tapping the earpiece support a few times, and waiting for a response.

"Operator, how May I help you?" A woman replied after about fifteen seconds.

"I'm calling from number three Gaywood street, and I need to be put through to the home office as soon as possible."

"One moment." The operator replied. "Connecting you now."

"Who is this?" A somewhat grumpy sounding official said, after another few seconds.

"My name is Clara Oswald. I'm currently employed as a maid by Madame Vastra. She said to tell you that she has the man who stole artful Dodger, at number three Gaywood street."

"We'll send a carriage right away." He said. "The department has been in an uproar."

Just as she put the phone back on the hook, Clara heard the clatter of boots, hobnailed, police issue, in the road outside, along with the sound of hooves and an iron-rimmed wheel. Then a familiar hat briefly stuck itself over the wall, shortly before the rest of the officer followed.

"Ma'am, the police are here."

"Coming." Vastra called through, before Clara heard the Silurian's boots rattling on the dressed stone floor.

Lestrade reached the door at about the same time that Vastra did.

"This is a _very _timely response, Inspector." Vastra said, her tone rather acidic.

"I know what you're like." He replied. "I'm not going to dump you on any of the local bobbies on the beat. Which room?"

"He's in the study." Vastra hissed. "This one answered the door armed, so I put him to sleep." She said, kicking the side of the floored gunman. "He had a pistol in his desk." She continued, holding up a large revolver between two fingers, holding it by the barrel.

Just as she handed the weapon over to Lestrade, the somewhat subdued Russian was led out, securely handcuffed. "Take him down to the station, sergeant, and charge him with theft of government papers, accessory during and after the fact to the murder of one Arthur West, attempting to pervert the course of justice, disposal of a corpse with intent to obstruct or prevent a coroner's inquest, and espionage against the crown."

"You're sure about disposal of a corpse with intent to obstruct or prevent a coroner's inquest?" Lestrade asked?

"Placing a murdered body so that it would be carried a long distance from the place of its death, and potentially end up under a underground train, which might well have disguised the actual cause of death, I would say is disposal of a corpse with intent to obstruct or prevent a coroner's inquest." Vastra replied, before handing over one of the man's cards to Lestrade.

Lestrade turned to the somewhat abashed Russian, now secured in a pair of darbies by two burly constables, who were standing one either side of him. "Milyutin Yeremey Grigorievich," he said, glancing down at the card. "You are under arrest for the theft of government papers, accessory during and after the fact to the murder of one Arthur West, attempting to pervert the course of justice, disposal of a corpse with intent to obstruct or prevent a coroner's inquest, and espionage against the crown. It is my duty to inform you that anything which you may say will be used against you in a court of law."

The man didn't reply, and Lestrade made a gesture to the officers, who manhandled him outside, before returning to scoop up the somewhat unfortunate gunwielder.

"Inspector, I'll be at the row in the morning." Vastra said, as he reached out to touch one of her arms briefly. "There are a couple of matters I need to take care of." She explained, as a coach suddenly skidded to a halt in the road, and a somewhat portly man, with a top hat pushed low over his brow, hurried over to her.

"Sir Thomas Milton…" the man began, before Vastra's tongue made a spirited attempt to lash out, leading to a look of confusion from both the police inspector and the bureaucrat.

"Madame has a somewhat unusual illness." Clara quickly explained. "Her tongue is unusually long , and her skin deformed somewhat."

"Inspector, arrest this man!" Vastra demanded.

"Why? Where's Grigorievich?" he said, shortly before Lestrade stepped up to him.

"Hopefully, this will turn out to be a misunderstanding, sir, but as of this moment, I'm arresting you as an accomplice to Mr Grigorievich. Because of this, it is my duty to inform you that anything which you may say will be used against you in a court of law."

Vastra just watched the man being loaded into the hurry-up wagon, before Clara prodded her in the side with her cosh.

"We're heading back to the row for hot chocolate, if you're interested." Clara told her, before firmly lodging the Silurian's oversized hat and veil combination over her head, and taking a firm hold of her, leading her into the road through the gate, which now was standing open, with a guard of two police constables on it, and turning towards the mews where they had left their carriage.

**I'm intending there to be a "wrap up" chapter, in which Vastra explains everything to Lord Camperdown, which is the next chapter in the pipeline, although it faces a certain chance of delay due to other content, such as figuring out the next case, which I intend to be as original as possible, within the genre.**

**I'd like to thank Ceridywn2, Insane Jellyfish and VastraJennyLove for their reviews. I also apologise for the magical appearance of an external ear curvature on Vastra in the previous chapter, which is something that, to my shame, had previously referenced in chapter 22.**


End file.
